Memories of my Brother

My niece from Ohio recently contacted me. She is one of two daughters of my twin brother, Gary. Now that she has lost her father, and more recently, her mother, she seeks a closer relationship with me. She tells me how much she sees of Gary when she looks at my picture.

I have written about the loss of my twin. It is a painful part of my memory, but an important one. I have decided to devote my journal to my memories of Gary and me as we grew up together and then, sadly, grew apart, in our adult life.

Gary and I were adopted together at the age of twenty-one months, following the death of our natural mother. We were told as soon an we could understand, the circumstances of our adoption and a few sketchy details about our natural family. In the forties, adoption was quite different from what it is today. If a couple had financial security and wanted a child, that was all that was required. No real background checks were made. Our adoptive parents would not have passed the scrutiny of today's world. They were both alcoholics. My mother was also mentally ill and drug dependent. I think they thought children would magically make all their problems go away.

But, as a child growing up in such a situation, neither of us realized anything was wrong. To us, our lives were normal.

We grew up in a home then out in the country near Omaha, Nebraska, and less than a mile from Father Flannigan's Boy's Town. Gary and I both had vivid imaginations and even developed a language of our own which sounded like nonsense to outsiders but made perfect sense to us. Gary had physical disabilities including being cross-eyed and mildly retarded. I think now his problems would have been diagnosed as learning disabilities.

As babies, he was the aggressive twin. He loved to grab handfuls of my hair and yank, often removing clumps at a time. But as we grew older, our relationship improved. We were each other's best friend and playmate. We were rarely apart.

My earliest memory of us is when we were still in cribs. We would stand up at the foot of the crib and rock back and forth to make the cribs move across the room. I also remember special linoleum in our playroom that had various childhood rhymes and pictures on it. We were rarely apart. We were each other's world in every way.

When we were five, our mother enrolled us in dancing lessons. We took ballet and tap. We went to lessons every week and even appeared in recitals. I remember how hurt I felt when I overheard the teacher telling my mother that I could never seriously pursue ballet because I had weak ankles and underdeveloped leg muscles. It made me angry to think that this person could determine what I could or could not do. Gary liked tap dancing more than ballet, probably because all the boy did in ballet was hold the girl's hand while she twirled.

We attended school in a rural one-room school house, much like Little House on the Prairie. My memories of that time, kindergarten through fifth grade, are among my favorites. Learning was magical for me and because it was a one-room school, I could advance to the level I belonged rather than be boxed in to one grade level of learning at a time. It was then that I first became aware that Gary and I differed. He had had an operation to correct his "lazy" eye, but that did not seem to improve his ability to read or learn. I quickly moved ahead of him academically and at once became his defender in the school yard. Gary was often teased unmercifully by the bigger boys. One time, he was running and not looking where he was going. He ran into a tree, broke his glasses, and cut himself. The other children gathered around, laughing and calling him names. I pushed through the crowd, punching and screaming, telling them to leave my brother alone. From those elementary years and on through high school, I kept my eye on him, protecting him from the bullies of the world.

I miss Gary more than words can say. It is not something I find easy to talk about. I cannot explain the loss I feel, as if something vital to my being were cut away. I don't think that missing part of me will ever be healed. But I prefer not to forget my special connection to Gary. We were twins. As long as I live, Gary also lives.