Somethin' Else

I was pretty young; perhaps 8 or 9. That would have made my little brother 4 or 5. My parents were fighting. It was not the usual row where my mother raged and my father said little. It was one of the times he was also yelling, and my brother and I were very scared. I remember trying to comfort him. We lived in a rather large house, with the bedrooms upstairs, but still when people yell, their voices carry. I distinctly remember thinking, "Someone is going to die here tonight."

So I went to the phone and called my big brother. He was a grown-up man in his 20's. He lived with his wife and daughter about ten or fifteen minutes away from us. He must have flown like the wind, because it seemed like I had no longer hung up the phone, but he was walking through the front door.

I don't know, or I can't remember, what he said, but they both stopped immediately. It was like a miracle. Did my big brother have super powers or something? To get two grown ups who have escalated in a horrible argument to immediately quiet down was somethin' else. He was somethin' else. He talked to me, got down at eye level with me. I have no recollection of what he said, but I remember he made me laugh. He was very good with children; he had a sense of what tickles a kid.

My parents were quiet. The house was quiet. I went to bed that night with things back to normal, or as normal as it ever was in our house. No one was going to die, at least not that night.

Once we were adults, I told my big brother this story, in one of those "Do you remember..." moments that we have with family. As I was talking, he had tears on his face, as did I. He said, "Susie, I don't remember that at all. It seemed like they were always fighting." I told him that it didn't matter if he remembered it, because I did. This is who my brother was. He was somethin' else.

Susan