Three Weeks With My Brother Read Free Page A

courted for a little more than a year, and were both twenty-one when they married on August 31, 1963, prior to the beginning of their senior year in college.
    A few months later, the rhythm method failed and my mom learned the first of her three lessons. Micah was born on December 1, 1964. By spring, she was pregnant again, and I followed on December 31, 1965. By the following spring, she was pregnant with my sister, Dana, and decided that from that point on, she would take birth control matters into her own hands.
    After graduation, my dad chose to pursue a master’s degree in business at the University of Minnesota and the family moved near Watertown in the autumn of 1966. My sister, Dana, was born, like me, on December 31, and my mother stayed home to raise us while my father went to school during the day and tended bar at night.
    Because my parents couldn’t afford much in the way of rent, we lived miles from town in an old farmhouse that my mother swore was haunted. Years later, she told me that she used to see and hear things late at night—crying, laughing, and whispered conversations—but as soon as she would get up to check on us, the noises would fade away.
    A likelier explanation was that she was hallucinating. Not because she was crazy—my mom was probably the most stable person I’ve ever known—but because she must have spent those first few years in a foggy world of utter exhaustion. And I don’t mean the kind of exhaustion easily remedied by a couple of days of sleeping in late. I mean the kind of unending physical, mental, and emotional exhaustion that makes a person look like they’ve been swirled around in circles by their earlobes for hours before being plunked down at the kitchen table in front of you. Her life must have been absolute hell . Beginning at age twenty-five, with three babies in cloth diapers—with the exception of those times when her mother came to visit—she was completely isolated for the next two years. There was no family nearby to lend support, we were poor as dirt, and we lived in the middle of nowhere. Nor could my mom so much as venture into the nearest town, for my father took the car with him to both school and work. Throw in a couple of Minnesota winters where snow literally reached the roof, subtract my always busy dad from the equation, throw in the unending whining and crying of babies and toddlers, and even then I’m not sure it’s possible to imagine how miserable she must have been. Nor was my father much help—at that point in his life, he simply couldn’t. I’ve often wondered why he didn’t get a regular job, but he didn’t, and it was all he could do to work and study and attend his classes. He would leave first thing in the morning and return long after everyone else had gone to bed. So with the exception of three little kids, my mother had absolutely no one to talk to. She must have gone days or even weeks without having a single adult conversation.

    Because he was the oldest, my mom saddled Micah with responsibilities far beyond his years—certainly with more responsibility than I’d ever trust my kids with. My mom was notorious for drumming old-fashioned, midwestern values into our heads and my brother’s command soon became, “It’s your job to take care of your brother and sister, no matter what.” Even at three, he did. He helped feed me and my sister, bathed us, entertained us, watched us as we toddled around the yard. There are pictures in our family albums of Micah rocking my sister to sleep while feeding her a bottle, despite the fact that he wasn’t all that much bigger than she was. I’ve come to understand that it was good for him, because a person has to learn a sense of responsibility. It doesn’t magically appear one day, simply because you suddenly need it. But I think that because Micah was frequently treated as an adult, he actually believed he was an adult, and that certain rights were owed him. I suppose that’s what led