Would you like fries with that?

My baby brother Harold and I have always been close.  There was a time, after his third divorce, that I rarely saw him but we talked constantly.  He was doing the hard work of therapy to find out exactly why he kept gettin' hooked up with crazy women.  More to the point, he was finding out who he was outside of everyone else's expectations. 

We both made the mistake of marrying and then remarrying the same folks out of a sense of obligation and guilt.  The middle boy never got married, and he's probably the smart one in that respect.  Though our parents have been hitched nearly 52 years, not a one of our trio of offspring seems to know how to get it right when it comes to love. 

The three of us are all totally attached to the farm and that is where we always end up, come hell or high water and there's been plenty of high water.  Our place is surrounded by a river that floods when the rain gods see fit to pull a winter and spring fling.  Before the river was channeled by the corp, we would move to town for a week at a time when the road was impassable for the red chevy wagon with the rusted out hole in the floor.  Often in the wintertime the power went spastic and we'd head for cover with the city relatives then, too.   Daddy and Mama both worked like fiends to make ends meet, but they rarely did.  They managed to get me graduated from college with a trade.  The boys still want to know where their money went...the tuition that they never claimed.  David left home late after a trial run, but he stays close by.  Me'n Mama worried about him constantly when he was out on that riverboat pushing barges up and down the mighty Mississippi.  After that he was a prison guard and then an industrial supervisor.  Now he sells party time to people who like to have fun and hear good music.    

Harold headed for the mountains of Virginia with his bride.  That gal is the handiest woman with a tool I ever saw.  They were both reporters back in the day, but tired of the way that "if it bleeds it leads" and moved on to more important things.  Simple things like dogs and wine and beautiful sunsets in the Blue Ridge mountains.  Annetta don't take no crap from him, and I admire her for that.  She's the brains of that operation, and he's the soul. 

The call always came when he was somewhere on Highway 51 between Dyersburg and Memphis and close to a fast food drive though.  We'd chat about what he and John had talked about that week in their session, and then I'd hear this: " Hang on Sis... Grilled chicken, fries and a  Diet Coke."   Then he would munch his way toward Memphis and all the bad news to be reported while we talked about life.  And love.  And the farm. 

I'm packing up and moving on too.  A wise woman told me once that if you don't own it you can't defend it.  Mountains just might be a good thing to wake up to. 

      

Comments

[Jennifer]

Literally, or figuratively?

What gives, Janie? You ok in there?

[AC]

Yeah, whats up?

[TSB]

I agree, packing up and moving on sounds like the thing to do at the moment. It doesn't even have to be literally. It just has to happen in your head. The moment when you know that all of this is wrong and you are going to make it right. You pack up the baggage, throw it overboard and start fresh.....

[Miss Cellania]

Mountains are a wonderful thing to wake up to. I got headaches in West Tennessee from that infinite horizon. Give me angles, shade, and drainage!