many miles

Two brothers on a nice summer day. Kids. Their whole lives still in front of them — two completely different lives. Only a few years here and there will they even spend in the same country.

This picture is some 40 years old, and while I can’t remember it being taken, I know where it was taken and therefore also roughly when. My brother and I are about 15 months apart, and this picture was taken when we lived with friends in Austria — a whole lifetime ago.

Over the years, I’ve been the one moving from city to city, and country to country, while he has lived pretty much his whole life in Sweden. I’ve lived maybe a total of 14 or so years in Sweden, and almost as many years in boarding school and with relatives in Austria. But even when we both lived in Sweden, most of the time we actually lived in different parts of town, or even in different cities. Then, 20 years ago, I moved to the States and we grew apart even more, both figuratively and literally.

I’m am very proud of my brother. He has been successfully moving forward and upward over the years in a more or less straight line, while my life has been quite a roller coaster. He has a beautiful family and a great career, and, like me, has accomplished most of it with little or no help. And I have to admit: sometimes I’m a bit envious of the rather stable and seemingly uncomplicated life that my brother lives. At the same time, I also know that I would never want to trade places: I could never live his life, and I’m sure he wouldn’t want to live mine. We truly are as different as our lives.

We get along well, but unfortunately we don’t see each other much. In fact, I think we may only have seen each other a half-dozen times or so in 20 years. Even phone conversations have been somewhat sparse during various periods in our lives, and while we talk more often nowadays, we still have a lot of catching up to do.

The reality is that we hardly know each other. We both know our respective friends better than we know each other. I know were he works, but I only have a very vague idea of what he does. I know that he is crazy about hand-built Italian bicycles (don’t ask), but I have no idea what car he drives, or even what his house looks like. I know some of his friends from when we were kids, but I really don’t know if he actually spends time with them. Like me, he has a lifetime of new friends and memories.

We do have some things in common, though, and we never miss an opportunity to poke the other in the eye (figuratively speaking, of course). For example, he still thinks that his taste in music is superior, while I know that he is obviously wrong. He also still blames me for a few childhood “incidents” where I allegedly took advantage of the fact that I am the older sibling, and allegedly locked him out on the balcony until I finished reading all his comic books. Yes, it may have been winter, but all I can say is this: he should have shared them with me .. oh, and by the way, he used to hide all those LEGOs under his pillow .. I needed them for my train!

Hopefully we’ll be able to spend more time with each other going forward. We usually have a lot of fun together. For example, I’ll never forget our back-packing trip across the Greek Islands during a summer in the early 80′s — sleeping on beaches, playing backgammon in cafes, drinking Ouzo and smoking those cheap, but horrible, cigarettes that smelled and tasted like burnt hair. Sunburn and sand in places where you don’t want it. What a summer!

-martin.

UPDATE:

• copied from my old website
• minor language/grammar tweaks