This weekend, I saw some friends I haven’t seen in awhile. They reminded me that it’s been nearly three years since my brother came to stay, had dinner with us on The Country Boy’s terrace, spoke in approximate but very intelligible French. I remembered that I had written this way back then and never found the time to publish it. I guess there’s no time like the present.
Sometimes you really need a smack in the face, and there’s no one quite like a sibling to do it.
I realize that, in the last few months, the percentage of sibling love has been a bit off-the-charts, due mainly to the fact that postings have been paltry at best, as well as to the fact that in the last three months, my little brother has spent three weeks sleeping on my floor. I love it, which you already know, if you read this slightly emo post. I’m not going to do that again, although I won’t say that bidding him goodbye the last time he left was any easier.
What I will say is that I’m grateful, sometimes, to get  fresh look at what you’ve been taking for granted. I feel as though in February I blinked and suddenly, here we are at the end of June; I’m 25… How did that happen?
For the week-and-a-half that my brother was here, the weather was generally lovely, made even better by the fact that the person who’s been simultaneously a mirror image, a polar opposite, a friend and a wake-up-call was here to walk around Paris with me, chatting about interesting facts, shared memories, and ideas about the future.
I never feel so Francified as when I spend time with a fellow American. It generally reminds me of all the ways that my views have changed since moving here, of how much France has shaped the adult I’ve become. I think my brother saw it, but I was more surprised with how much — despite our differing paths — we’ve remained the same. I’ll never forget the time he put a finger on what I love about visiting neighborhoods in other countries that are a bit off the beaten track.
“I like seeing kids,” he said. “Otherwise it doesn’t seem real.”
Kids, by the way, were one of our topics of conversation.
Before my parents have a simultaneous heart attack, neither of us is planning on having kids soon. What we discussed was more the idea of kids, what we would want for ours, someday, when we choose to have them. What elements of our shared childhood would go into what we grew up with, and what things we grew up with we would toss into the wind.
My brother, always astute, mentioned that he’s sure that our parents had the same thought process, that perhaps the things that we have deemed unimportant will be the things that our kids will talk about, years later, saying, “I wish Mom had been like this.”
We both want to raise our kids with the same ideals that we were raised with, though we both plan on putting more of an emphasis on family reading time. We both like the idea of having kids who are into sports, though neither of us is into “sportsball,” as my friend Professor Snark calls it.
Perhaps what interested me most about chatting with my brother is how different our childhoods were, or, perhaps better stated: how differently we perceived our common childhood. We were four years apart, but we spent much of our time growing up together.
That’s where it stops. The entry I wrote, way back when. Now my brother has graduated and so have I. He’s in the very hard spot of looking for work, and I’ve finally stumbled upon what I want to do and am living and breathing it entirely. Maybe someday soon we’ll have another conversation like that one we had in the park behind Notre Dame, watching as young Romanian girls tried to get people to sign false petitions.
No matter where we are in our respective lives, I always feel that the four years of difference and similar temperaments makes each of us an interesting mirror for the other. I’d like to see what I look like now, like I could, just briefly, then.
Roast Chicken and Potatoes
1 whole fryer
4 potatoes
4 cloves garlic
salt and pepper
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
Cut the potatoes in quarters, lengthwise, and then in thick slices. Add the garlic cloves, leaving their skins on. Season the potatoes with salt and pepper and toss to combine in a roasting pan.
Season the chicken generously with salt and pepper. Place on a rack over the potatoes.
Roast for 10 minutes. Then reduce the temperature and roast for 20 minutes per pound. Be sure to toss the potatoes about every 30 minutes, to ensure that they get evenly coated in the cooking juices.
Reminisce.