mon frère

i spoke to my brother today and, as par the course, we had an eclectic conversation, ranging from climatology (he's been researching the price of procuring weather station data) to the Haitian relief efforts (he has an opportunity to go, but is hesitant to live in "a Baptist fort")

;

other topics included Myanmar, tweets from his favorite Nascar driver, and the meager square footage of homes in Paris.

but this is beside the point.

the point is that my brother and i spent a large portion of our respective childhoods and adolescence living apart from one another. he moved to Texas when he was 11, and i left home to attend a school for nerds in Durham. more than a decade passed with us seeing each other only on holidays or the occasional summer vacation. no phone calls, no visits, no correspondence, save one heartbreaking letter he wrote to me during a particularly bleak portion of my life

;

i never told him how much it meant to me.

over the years my regret has largely subsided, but sometimes i still think how nice it would be if we had grown up closer. he has always been smarter than i, surer of himself, and made better life decisions

;

i wonder what might have been in different circumstances, in different families, in different personalities.

i think in some ways i'm still coming to terms with how and how much our relationship has shaped who i am

;

i arrive at a pause:

how
much of
our being is
formed long before
we have the
words to
express
it?