Brotherly Love

Deb: I am six years older than my brother Craig, aka Egg, Eggish, Egghead, The Egg. I gave him the Egg moniker when I was around 8, further cementing myself as one of the great wits of our time. Name is Craig/call him Egg. Brilliant. Genius even. In kid world, a rhyming nickname is all we need to put ourselves on the map.

Egg, Deb, and Deb's dad, Jim

 He is my baby brother and to this six-year-old girl, he became my living doll. He was a precious toddler––all boy, as they say. He used to walk around with nothing but a dirty face and a diaper filled with Matchbox and Dinky toys. He would walk, squat, pull the little cars out of his diaper and start playing instantly. The owners of the cars would always always have the same names. Bill, Frank, Joe. “Hey, Joe, I like your car. Thanks, Frank. Here comes Bill. Hi, Bill. Hi, Joe. Hi, Frank.” After this scintillating exchange, and some good car crashes, he would pick up the cars and imaginary guys, stuff them in his diaper and he was on his way to scout another location. Precious. Cutest little thing in the world he was.

And I loved him. Adored him really.

But as with all good things, that love came with control. He was my little puppet and I was his loving but demanding puppet master. And yet, he loved it! Translation––he was too young to know what I was doing.

So we played our games. Every day. Little tiger, little lion. I was the owner of the animal and he was the tiger or lion, depending on his master’s whim. I tied a scarf around his neck and attached it to a rope and lead him around calling out instructions. “Time to eat, little lion, time to drink, little tiger, time to jump off the chesterfield, little lion, time to leap through the hoola hoop, little tiger.” And we played for hours.

I like to think I had something to do with developing his imagination, but I am sure I didn’t. The Egg was born with a vivid imagination. I remember hearing him on the landing at the top of the stairs playing with the hockey guys he had cut out of the newspaper. He assumed all roles in that game from the trumpet playing “Oh Canada” to the roar of the crowd to the comments from the coaches. He would play for hours on end and it is one of my favourtite memories.

He is creative, he is an artist, he is athletic. And all through his adult life, he has had ideas. If just one of his creative ideas had come to fruition, he would have been a billionaire. But they didn’t and he didn’t. He has a good solid job which pays him well and which he enjoys to a degree. But it was not what he envisioned for himself at all. In the meantime, he became something I never would have suspected of him. He became a devoted, loving and selfless Dad. After the party decades, I never thought I’d see the day.

I know that he had big dreams and I know he has struggled with them not coming true.

But as I watch him today I think, “Isn’t it funny how we never dream the small things––as if success in these things is not really success in life.” We never dream of being great parents who work hard to give our kids something we never had. We don’t dream of how satisfying that will be and how great the rewards. We dream of being rich or famous or hugely successful in our chosen field and we are right to dream those dreams.

But I look at my brother today, healthy, married to a loving wife, with two gorgeous kids, and I see his riches. I have such admiration for him and his devotion to his good life. I watch him become the loveliest parts of my Dad and I thank God because I know I will always have my Dad in him. But mostly I am a fan. He would never know this because in our society we tend to judge each other by what we do for a living and how glamourous it is and so he would never suspect my deep admiration. I wish it weren’t so. I wish we judged each other solely on our hearts and wits and empathy. But we don’t. Even if we mean to, we don’t. I love my brother. If his heart was measured in gold, he wouldn’t be able to stand.

To view my cute as a button brother and his loving but bossy sister, enjoy these old super 8 snippets. My bossiness knows no bounds!!! How we laugh at these in our family!

Barbara: Oh, Deb, are these ever precious!!! I have no super-8 video of my childhood, but I do remember how much we all enjoyed a good family slide show.

Yup, I was the bossy one too, as my sisters will attest (although they have claimed they liked it—not the “bossy” part so much, but the time we shared together and the love they knew I felt for them). I was forever commanding performances and directing them and making them my babies (or the Dads, because, you know, I had to be the Mom.)

But I think the emotional centre of your piece today is that part about your brother’s dreams not turning out quite the way he thought, and the value we place on abstract, professional accomplishments. I know I get caught up in that too. Not judging people on their triumphs so much as judging myself on my lack thereof. I think this whole notion is the crux on which midlife rotates. You got this far and suddenly wonder if it's far enough, or you're absolutely sure it's not. So now what? Well, the axis keeps rotating, and you keep turning with it.  And, if you're lucky, you've got a whole slew of satellites orbiting with you, reminding you of the simple beauty of ... this.

I love when you say: “I wish we judged each other solely on our hearts and wits and empathy.” And I actually wonder if in our heart of hearts this isn’t exactly how we judge people. Because so often it’s who we touch, not how we touched them, that lasts, rippling down through generations.

Oh, my heart is just warm and glowing right now! Thanks, Deb, for a beautiful testament, but also for a loving, true and profound reminder. You, too, are worth your weight in gold, my dear. Mwah!

Deb and Barb Have A Three-Way

Deb and Barb Have A Three-Way With Hollye

Deb and Barbara met Hollye when she arrived on the scene here with her beautiful, heartfelt comments. Then we discovered her wonderful blog, Truth and Consequences, a touching, articulate examination of how we react to events around us, whether they are world issues, community politics, or personal upheavals. Hollye is also a gorgeous singer, which you can discover for yourself if you follow the links on her site.

Hollye as Bunny

Hollye: If you had asked me ten years ago what I’d be doing in my late forties, I’d have said that my two children would be grown and out of the house, I’d be in college finishing that elusive degree, travelling all the places I used to dream about, and finally writing that book I’d always had in my head. I expected to be sipping espresso in a café in Paris, lost in deep contemplation, engulfed in the reinvention of myself at mid-life. But here I am in this bunny suit.

Not exactly what I had in mind, and yet, I couldn’t be more grateful. My life is a clear illustration of that saying Man plans, God laughs.

Here’s where my plans went awry. I had a surprise pregnancy at forty-one (and OH what a surprise). Then at forty-six my college-attending son broke the news of his girlfriend’s unexpected pregnancy. She was also a Japanese exchange student, losing her housing, and they’d need a place to live.

Today we have six people living under our roof. I spend my days chaperoning field trips, changing diapers, rocking the baby, kissing scraped knees and volunteering as the Easter Bunny….

The reality of who I am now is so far from the expectation. Life is funny that way. You ask the universe for apples and you get oranges, but hey, I’m not complaining. Every shock became a great blessing. So on the days that Taylor’s band is rehearsing downstairs at deafening levels while the cat is puking, the dogs are chasing each other through the house, the baby is teething and my five-year-old is hanging from the chandeliers, I take a deep breath and remind myself how quickly these years will pass, and how I’ll yearn for them when they’re gone.

So I guess its no café in Paris for me, at least not right now. But hey––I still wrote that book! I strive to be a writer in the midst of constant interruptions and pre-menopausal memory failures. Yes, it’s hectic, but as a person who loves story, I watch the daily goings on and say to myself I couldn’t write this any better.

Barbara: Hollye, this idea of how we thought we would be versus how things turned out is such a fraught subject, I’m THRILLED you brought it up. My friend Charlotte often quotes me as having said many years ago, “I want an extraordinary life, not an ordinary one.” The good thing about that mantra is that is encourages you to keep going despite any setback, it convinces you that anything is possible, and it inspires you to always shift the lens to change the view when the image isn’t quite what you had hoped. BUT it can also make you overlook the beauty of your ordinary life in all its extraordinariness.

I remember distinctly the idea I had in my head of myself as an adult when I was 10 or 12: a coiffed brunette wearing a spaghetti-strapped white clingy dress holding a mic and singing my heart out on stage in front of thousands. I was SURE that’s who I was going to be one day. It didn’t matter that I was a skinny blonde with absolutely no singing talent whatsoever. What I did do was write, write, write. 

Barbara at 10 doing what she loves best

Later I thought I was going to be an actor, star of screen and stage. This is also when I gave up writing, believing a careless grade ten English teacher who made a point of telling me that I didn’t have any talent. But with visions of stardom dancing in my head, did I go to Hollywood and try my luck? No, I had babies and loved them and loved my cozy life here in Toronto. My husband and I settled in for the count. But that picture kept clinging: me starring in countless projects and always having the opportunity to do this thing I love…. That didn’t quite work out either.

BUT because of that setback, I found my way back to writing. And here I sit, laptop on hand, chatting with you guys, something I COULD never have dreamed, and diving into all that is extraordinary within my “ordinary” life. Like you, Hollye, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Deb: Hollye, I always think we go through our lives hoping to do what we want to do, and in the end we find that we ended up doing what we were called to do. Certainly that doesn’t mean you still can’t travel the world and follow your dreams but clearly there are other pressing things to take care of first.

We figured when the boy left (almost three years ago now) that we might sell the house and buy an apartment in NYC or travel to our passion places. But my Mom and Dad, as it turned out, need us at this time of life and we just can’t go. I had no idea what a gift it would turn out to be. Giving back to them has not even scratched the surface of what they have given to me in my life. I am on an adventure, just not the one I planned.

And for the record, the most beautiful picture of you sipping wine on a balcony in Paris would never compare to the shot of the Hollye Bunny! Makes me smile every time I look at it. But keep dreaming that dream, girl! It will become reality ... one day.

Hollye Dexter is freelance writer, blogger, and author of the memoir Only Good Things. She is also a singer/songwriter with four albums out. She founded two nonprofit organizations, running intergenerational arts programs for senior citizens and teenagers in the Foster Care and Juvenile Justice Systems. In 2007 she received the Agape Spirit award from Dr. Michael Beckwith (from The Secret) for her work with at-risk youth. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and three children.