The Land of Nod

I used to love to hate my brother. He was my captor, my bully, the person's whose life I lived to mess up, whether it was his bedroom or his psyche, I was all over it.

He used to hide under my bed and grab my legs as I would walk by. I used to steal his penmenship books and mark them all up. He should have seen it as a compliment. I wanted to write as well as I thought he did. I was four. He was almost nine.

He used to punch me and throw things at me from across the dinner table and blame me when I retaliated. I used to tell him he was the mailman's child. He used to walk me to my kindergarten class and try to trip me as we walked or throw loogies at me (his). I would fashion a shank and try to stab him (I must have looked good in prison garb). We used to play this game of calling each other by our names spelled backwards. He was Nod, I was Adnil and we were the offspring of Eoj and Teragram.

I don't know when that dynamic changed. Maybe it was when he tried to protect me from the local gym lethario. Maybe it was when he stole my teen romance novels and I realized just how much of a romantic he was. Or maybe it was when we teamed up to convince my parents we were old enough to appreciate Disney World or the benefits of owning and taking care of a dog of our very own. We were a good team. He was my Nod.

We still are. I called him today, to say hi but to also hear a reassuring word. He didn't disappoint. I was worried, as I usually am since I worry if the sky is going to fall, if something, anything will go wrong. Usually it's something beyond my control but I worry still. This time it was about my car and the money that I recently had to put out to bring the car up to road-worthy. I had bad brakes, bad to the point where I was worried (yes, worried again) that I wouldn't be able to stop. One week the brakes were fine, the next they were not. A visit to my mechanic and $500 later and I was on my way, but I was left with almost nothing in the bank account and that had me a bit scared for the next week until my pay cheque came in.

Crap happens, Scribe, he said. You needed the brakes, you got them fixed. Do you have food in the fridge? Are all of your bills up-to-date? Yes? Then you've done everything you can. Crap happens and it's only money. You'll make more of it, but at least you have the car to get you to the job so you can make more money.

He didn't call me Scribe. He called me Linda, since he never calls me Scribe. He doesn't even know I have a blog. He did, however, lift my spirits. He reminded me of the time he had to buy two new cars in a two-month span, one to replace the broken down minivan he had been driving and a second one to replace the car in which he got into an accident. Crap happens. And as long as the good outweighs the crap, you're still in the positive, in the black.

Crap happens and I'm glad that I have my brother on my side to remind me of the positives, of the credits that I still have and to laugh in the face of my worries, no matter how minor, how small in the grand scheme of things. I have my family and that's a great positive in my book.