My brother likes music continuously playing in every room. I often turn it off when we leave. My brother runs his dogs for miles sometimes twice a day. I walk ours around the block in the morning before it gets hot. My brother organizes swims across the lake. I paddle. My brother sets up tents in giddy anticipation of the arrival of his adult children. I am oblivious while mine panics when he realizes he won’t have a place to sleep. My brother lugs buckets of soapy water into the woods to scrub every surface of the outhouse. I sit in there gazing at the spider-discarded pile of dead flies and make a mental note to bring a whisk broom next time, which I never do. My brother celebrates our grandfather’s antique wooden tent stakes that held up the Army tent when we were very young. I pound in shiny aluminum stakes with a shiny sledge. My brother makes joyful music by pounding on a cardboard box as he sings the Wabash Cannonball. I used to sing in the shower. My brother never stops. I struggle to start.
The joys of my brother are many. His days are filled with multitudes, the likes of which I never quite understand. But he is the yang to my yin. I cannot imagine a world without him in it.