Kites

When I was five, I remember running across an open field on some warm summer day. We were flying kites, and I chased the one shaped like a bird, imagining I was flying right with it. The joy didn’t last long, though, because before I knew it my kindergarten shoe hooked over a rock and slammed my body against the concrete. Everything hurts more at that age, because the pain is fresh, you have no built up tolerance.

You had the tolerance, though. Just a few years older, you took great seriousness in your job as an older brother and ran over to where I sat, bawling with my leg bent against my chest.

“Hey,” you said, wispy blonde hair tangling itself in the wind. You crouched beside me and lifted up the legs of your pants to show me the crusting patches of scabs that littered your knees. “Look, I got these riding my skateboard last week. It’ll be okay.”

Not that it helped, because at the time I thought the scabs looked disgusting and there would be no way I could manage having those on my legs. But you lifted me up anyway, and walked me back to our parents for a bandaid.

Many years later, you storm up the stairs and away from the emotionally devastating conversation that occurred in the living room. Without hesitation, I follow you up, knowing you’d do the same for me in a heartbeat.

I knock lightly on the door that you just slammed, its sound reverberating down the hallway, past the empty spots where family pictures used to hang. There's no answer, but I enter anyway.

There are clothes and books and the dinner from last night scattered around your room, but I pay them no mind. They are not important. You sit with your back to the door, on your bed, your head buried in your hands. You make no sound, but your shoulders shake, each jagged movement equivalent to a piece of my heart falling away and into the darkest depths of my soul.

Slowly, I move to sit next to you. The mattress folds to our combined presence. In the quiet, I wrap my arms around your shoulders, and within seconds mine start to shake too, a stutter in the weight they carry in everyday life.

We ache, but we ache together.

Later, as I left your room, I thought back to that sunny childhood day, and was glad that at least now I could help lift you up, too.