Your definition of home is very likely to be different from mine ... or his

                        
“Same as it ever was, same as it ever was.” -- Talking Heads from “Once in a Lifetime” (1981) When we were kids, my brother and I fought almost all the time and, being three years older, I won most of those disputes. He’d make fun of me for being so skinny. I’d fire back something about his being chubby. He’d mock the Rolling Stones. I’d crucify Elton John. He’d go to my Little League games and relish me striking out. I’d attend his piano recitals and wait for him to hit the wrong note. Brothers being brothers, I suppose. We’d beat each other up, literally and figuratively, and that -- again -- was just fine with both of us. Growing up is an often difficult process and no one knows, precisely, when a body slam is one too many. Lest you get the wrong idea, he and I have become, well, good friends since my wife and I relocated to the South a decade or so ago. We don’t get to see each other as often as we once did, when I lived in Northeast Ohio and he was ensconced in the Laurel Highlands of Pennsylvania, but we’ve tried to make the best of it. The night before I was to fly out for my latest, and perhaps last, visit to the place we grew up, my brother called me. I had this weird idea about getting the three of us -- including our sister, who’s a year younger than I and a year older than he -- together to plant flowers on our parents’ grave. And so I spelled it out for him. “I was thinking,” I said, “that we’re all back home, we could ---” “Stop it,” my brother said. “Just stop it.” “Stop what?” I asked. “Calling that town home. It just isn’t anymore,” he said. I felt, at that moment, as if I were 15 and he was 12 and I was getting ready to push him down a flight of stairs. Or into the deep end of the pool when I knew he couldn’t swim. But I took a deep breath and tried to stay on point. “Whatever,” I said. “We could do that, sort of as a family.” He agreed that it was a good notion in principle but that there were so many moving parts in my plan -- none of us lives in that place anymore and it would take serious coordination to bring it off. “It’ll be good to see you ... back home,” I said, stressing those last two words like a Keith Richards chord. In fact, I must have said “back home” 20 times in our conversation. My brother’s always been fond of saying, “Look in the mirror” or “Look at your wife” before adding what he considers to be his knife-edge thrust. “That’s where home is.” He’s also quite insistent when it comes to our family’s little legacy in that town. “We didn’t,” he says, “leave so much as a ripple.” This always reminds me of a conversation I had with the man who was the principal of the high school we all attended. “The Deweys,” he said, “have done it all ... and won it all.” I’ve always loved that line. As it turned out, however, we couldn’t control the weather, which turned violently chilly two days after I’d touched down in Cleveland. What had been a benign early spring devolved into a frost-warning April morning, making the whole concept of planting flowers ridiculous. Those tender blooms could, after all, die in the cemetery that night, an irony not lost on any of us. So we just chatted. My sister and her husband, my brother and his wife and I caught up as we wrapped ourselves in hoodies and scarves, and my notion of a picnic in the park went the way of a Beatles reunion. And I felt kind of let down, though I tried my best not to show it. I’d traveled 770 miles for this chance and, as I saw it slipping away, I wished that I lived, well, closer to home, though I kept that sentiment to myself, not wanting to engage in a graveyard argument with my brother. Later, at an indoor lunch, however, he surprised me, confessing that he was actually considering the possibility of attending his first-ever high school reunion. His 35th. Now, I should tell you that my brother was elected senior class president. When that happened, I was a sophomore at Notre Dame, 230 miles away and proud as any brother could be. Mom’s letters were like dispatches from the campaign trail and I followed the race with great interest. But my brother, for reasons much too complicated to get into now, has resisted every temptation to attend a single gathering of the tribe, the one that elected him as their representative. This, however, could change this summer. I hope it does. I’ve been encouraging him for decades to at least come back once, just to see if he’d have a good time. I just have a feeling that he’ll enjoy himself immensely, when he finally decides that it’s his time to get back home. Mike Dewey can be e-mailed at CarolinamikeD@aol.com or snail-mailed at 6211 Cardinal Drive, New Bern, NC 28560.


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