[3:35 a.m.] Ring Ring

Occasionally, I'll get random phone calls at odd hours from Philadelphia area codes.  Like this morning at 3:35 a.m.  And they're never booty calls 'cuz [one] I'd have to be in the same city for an impromptu get-together and [two] homey don't play dat.  Every time I get a call from an unknown number, my heart stops.  It's never for more than a beat or two, but it's like my heart temporarily forgets about its job because my brain's taking up the entirety of my body force.  My mind automatically switches to crisis mode and starts rushing around in useless circles going over possible D-Day scenarios of family drama.

My mind usually wonders if the call's from my youngest brother.  I would like to think he'd be inclined to reach out to one of his three siblings at some point, but part of me wonders if he'll choose another route.  I won't allow myself to expand on that because it's painful to think about, but I would welcome a call from him whenever about anything.  Even if it were four in the morning.  And about nothing.    

My concern runs deeply for this brother.  The youngest in our hefty clan of six, he turned 21 last month.  I didn't get a chance to say "Happy Birthday!" in person, or even over the phone.  I didn't call because he won't answer.  He doesn't have a cell phone anymore.  I didn't send a card because he won't open the envelope.  I didn't send a gift because he won't use it.  So I e-mailed well wishes and of course didn't hear back.  I'm not angry at all.  I'm just sad that we don't keep in touch.  I think of him daily and how he's doing...If he's seeing his friends...If he's self-medicating on so much pot that his memory retention's nil...If he's upped the ante and moved onto hardcore drugs...How he's holed himself up at my parents masquerading as a recluse even though his personality is far from one...If he's eating...The list goes on...

Last month, I had an unusually late night meeting.  Two hours into it, my phone lit up and I saw three missed calls and a smattering of text messages in the span of five minutes from the other two siblings.  I sat stone-faced and started to panic reliving the whole incident all over again in Philadelphia: that one in October of 2005; the one where my mother was off in Korea for her first extended visit since moving to the States in the seventies; the one where my father was "away" (in quotes because no one ever knows for sure where he goes during his disappearing acts); the one where my sister had an unusually distressing dream one random night which prompted a curious call home which led to the eventual discovery that the youngest brother hadn't been to school in ten days and evidently hadn't eaten for almost as long.  Then there were all the train rides from the city to the suburbs to meet my old teachers, my brother's current teachers, and where I learned that the administration had planned on kicking him out of school upon uhmmah's return to the country.  I felt stupid for dismissing my mother's demand that I move back home during her trip so that I could make sure my brother would be taken care of.  My 16-year-old brother.  I had insisted he was a grown boy able to take care of himself.  Surely she was overreacting, I had thought.

Emaciated, exhausted, unkempt, nearly shrunken beyond recognition, my baby brother was not anything you'd want to see step out of a car in front of your building.  The school was reasonable: the threat of expulsion was off the table if his academic performance continued to improve as it had during the two weeks since Soeur's dream got things moving.  Among other reasonable requirements, there was one other big life-changer: that he continued to live under my care.  Live with your tight-assed 24-year-old sister?  Hmm, no thanks.  He hated the idea.  But it was either this or transferring to a rough local public high school after more than six years at a small private prep school.  He made his choice to stay and we made it work.  We made my tiny studio apartment work.  We made his commute work.  We juggled all the scheduling.  We.  Just.  Made.  It.  Work.  For a year and a half.  Until the day he got his diploma.

I won big this time around, for it was an unforeseen opportunity to learn young and early what most don't until they become parents to their own children: Teenagers are an intense lot, quick to veer off or stay on track when you least expect it.  Teenagers are impressionable and environment can make or break this critical developmental stage of their adolescence.  Also, single parenthood?  It is not for the faint of heart. 

I still find my parents' refusal to admit their utter failure to their last child devastating.  Their juvenile understanding of their son's desperate situation back then made my blood boil.  It's hard to recognize and accept your parents' mistakes, especially the ones from which they refuse to learn.  It's hard to see it for the first time, harder still when you see it a second, third, and fourth.  It's hardest to keep your eyes open and see past all the despicable stuff to their strengths.  That's where I am.  

Now I have a little brother who's not so little anymore.  He's completely detached from the world at 21, the very age when he should be having the time of his life riding high on his potential, partying away nights, learning how to skillfully maneuver through social circles, playing like a boy becoming an adult, winning some, losing some, but having fun all the while and growing.  You know, I think this is what they call living.  Instead, he sits in my parents' decrepid old house completely checked out of anything remotely within my realm of understanding.  

And so I miss him.  I try not to be sad, but golly, that's easier said than done.  It makes me sad that I don't know him.  It makes me sad that he's not part of my life.  It makes me sad that he doesn't want to be a part of mine or our siblings.  But most of all, it makes me sad knowing that every family has its fair share of problems and that ours has accumulated and ended up in the very form that is my kid brother.  The same one whose preschool teachers couldn't get enough of, the same one who I'd bring to the movies whenever I could get away from campus, the one who I remember smiling and laughing a lot before I left home for college.  I don't know who he is now.  I guess I'm just sad that I have to miss him at all.