Father Knows Best
I can still see my brother’s angry face as my father pulled us apart. I was around eight, which would have made Kent about six at the time. We had been fighting—again, and this time my father had had enough. We were both still panting from rage and from chasing each other all over the house. I don’t recall now why the fight started. It was probably Kent’s fault, but the specific reason for this altercation escapes me. My father sat us both on the couch and started in on his customary lecture about how mine and Kent’s fighting was ridiculous and how much it drove our parents crazy. But the speech ended differently this time. He said, “You two are going to be family for the rest of your lives. Y’all will always be there for each other and you may not like the idea right now, but the two of you will be best friends later on.” I remember looking over at my brother then, whose tongue was sticking out where his permanent teeth were coming in, and thinking how wrong my father was.
Kent was not someone that I could become friends with, I reasoned. How could you be best friends with someone who was constantly practicing Hulk Hogan’s wrestling moves on you? Sure, he was a good playmate. Before Kent was born, I remember asking my parents for a sibling so I would have someone to play with. When my parents brought Kent home from the hospital, I came out with my tennis ball and threw it at him. “Catch,” I said. Thank goodness I missed him. When Kent got a little older we did play a lot. We entertained friends and family constantly by performing scenes from the Andy Griffith Show. Kent and I would fight over who got to be Barney, even though it was also fun to play Otis, the town drunk sometimes. But the most fun was when there were no adults around. For Christmas one time, Kent got a new pair of roller skates and I got a bicycle and a jump rope. I still remember that Christmas morning. Kent and I wanted to play with all of our new toys at once, so I tied the jump rope to the back of my bicycle and pulled Kent along in his roller skates. We went to the top of our neighborhood’s steepest driveway, and down we went, me pedaling as fast as I could and Kent holding on for dear life. Around the curve we sped, and I decided it would be fun to make a right into our driveway and end our adventure in our yard. Being eight at the time, I was not well versed in the laws of centrifugal force, so it caught me by complete surprise when my screaming brother swung out wide on the turn and slammed straight into the mailbox. As he rolled into the ditch, I was certain he was dead, but while I was coming up with a good story to tell our parents, Kent groaned and rolled over. To keep him from telling Mom, I promised that I would take out the trash that week. Many of our escapades ended in a promise to do the other’s chores and a solemn pact not to tell either one of our parents.
We not only wore out our parents, but Kent and I were absolute terrors anywhere we went. After the church services on Sunday mornings, we would race out to the playground to be first on the swings. I can only imagine now how we must have looked: Kent in his short pants and knee socks and me in my patent leather shoes and ruffled underwear sprinting out of church to the playground to see how high we could get before we jumped out. We must have caused quite a stir in the little old ladies in charge of our spiritual development.Then there was the time that Mom and Dad dropped us off at our grandmother’s house while our parents went to Orlando for some convention. Kent and I loved our grandmother’s house because it was stocked with all the candy that you could eat, and she never made us take a nap. I don’t think someone could come up with a better formula for disaster: 2 children + 0 naps + plenty of sugar = 1 worn out grandmother.
Early in the week, Kent and I got into a fight over who got to rock in the rocking chair. He was there first, but I was the oldest. I proceeded to throw him out of the chair and began to rock as he tried to climb back in. Naturally, I rocked right over his foot. Cranky and full of sugar, he began to scream and cry. My grandmother rushed out to the porch exhausted by our relentless fighting and irritated that we had pulled her away from As the World Turns. She grabbed us both by the scruff of the neck and dragged us into house toward the phone. She began looking for the number to Dad’s hotel in Orlando. Scared into an alliance, Kent and I began to plead with her not to call. She didn’t. A week later, she told my parents that she loved us both but only wanted to see us one at a time from now on unless they could stay there to referee.
As Kent and I grew older, we moved to Alabama to be closer to my mother’s family. Out fighting tapered off and we began to hear the childhood tales of my mother and her five brothers and sisters. My grandfather had insisted that all of his children have a job, and what better way to make money in the summer than to mow the neighborhood yards? While all of the siblings worked in this makeshift company, my mom’s brothers were in charge of the lawnmower maintenance. Most of the siblings concur that Elaine was the butt of most of the pranks. Once, my uncles tricked her into holding onto the spark plugs while they tried to start the mower. It must have shocked her something awful, and she only did it once, but it made Kent’s and my shenanigans seem tame. Then there was the time that they had shrimp for dinner. Ward, being the youngest, who had never seen shrimp was convinced by his brothers and sisters that the tails were the best part. So while the six children split the shrimp five ways, Ward dined on shrimp tails that night.As I sat at the dinner table that night and listened to my aunts and uncles laugh about all of the events of their childhood, I began to see what my father had been talking about all those years before. The only five people in the world who understood and shared my mother’s extreme loathing for okra are her brothers and sisters. They provide a link to her past that no one else can comprehend. Remember the time that Daddy came home and y’all were trimming the hedges by holding the lawnmower over the tops of them? How about the time Greg and Elaine were playing Tarzan on the poison ivy vine? That was a mess! What about when Elaine was learning to drive and she ran right off the road and into the dump? I thought Daddy was going to kill her! But through all of their fighting and pranks and petty disagreements, they were all the support they had when my grandfather was recently diagnosed with cancer. When Nana, my great-grandmother, died, they all sat in the front pew of their childhood church for her funeral. The six of them are infinitely linked.And so it is for my brother and myself.
As a Southerner now living in the Midwest, among people who do not understand my background, it is comforting to know that I can call my brother and he will tell me if I am starting to sound like a Yankee. Kent is the only one who can truly appreciate the humor in the way my dad runs or how embarrassing it is when my mother dances in the car. Kent is the only one who can laugh with me about the way Ms. Colette from daycare used to say “kinny-garden.” These are the memories that we share. Because of all that we know and understand about each other, it is often my brother that can offer me the best advice and vice versa. When Kent comes home with bad grades and my dad threatens to send him off to the military, I am the one to plead his case. When I go home for Christmas and run up my mother’s long distance bill, it is Kent who tells Mom to lighten up. We make a good team now. We still argue. We still disagree about a lot, but it is nice to have that understanding to fall back on. Sure, I was the one who convinced him that drinking vinegar was a good idea. He was the one who drove me crazy by repeating everything I said for days at a time. But he also shared my pain when our parents got divorced, and we will sit together at the funerals of our family members.
So as I look back on that day when my father had finally had enough, I am thankful that my dad convinced me not to kill my brother, and I am also glad that he turned out to be right. Happy Birthday, little brother!
