auradis

We’ve never driven to Canada through the Vermont before, where the curving mountains touch the underbelly of the grey sky and tendrils of clouds cling to the trees.

As we pass the lush landscape, I muse about all those who explored these lands before we built these highways. What was it like to carve a path through these forests without the protection of a car and the knowledge that food could be obtained at the nearest exit?

//

I’m always waiting for my brother to show signs of maturity, but so far the only indications I’ve noticed are a deepening of the voice and hair growth on his legs. The petulant teenager has been nothing short of a little demon on this trip, and there are times when I have literally thought about strangling him to death, mostly while dealing with his exasperating antics in the backseat.

His sinful nature is at work, but I also blame my parents. The older I get, the more I can see the flaws in their parenting — I was an easy child to raise, but they messed up on Larry. My mother, who spends the most time with him [while I am at school and my father travels], spoils him incessantly, which I have already detailed rather exhaustively.

Larry was not in a good mood when he found out that we were visiting the Newport mansions in Rhode Island, and he truly did his best to make everybody in the family hate him for the few hours that we were there, lashing out both verbally and physically.

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I’ve realized rather recently that gift-giving is one of my love languages, though in a more minor way than my two main ones. I really enjoy buying things for people that I love, which is why it took me an hour to pick out a hat for my brother’s birthday present — it had to be perfect. I groused about how much it cost [$29 after tax], but I decided it was worth it.

After he had gone to bed on the eve before his birthday last week, I put the present, wrapped up, before his door so that he could receive it first thing in the morning. I’m always the last one awake in my family on the weekdays, so by the time I came out of my room he had already opened it.

Larry was watching TV downstairs with the hat next to him on the table, and when I approached him I didn’t receive any word of thanks [not that I was looking for gratitude, but I figured he’d be excited to get what he had been wanting]. Instead, he told me that it looked weird on him. He put it on to show me and indeed, although the hat size was S/M, it was too big for him. I thought it looked better on me, to be honest:

So the hat spent the rest of the week on my parents’ dresser, unwanted.

Today after church, my mother took Larry to the mall to exchange the hat for another one. When I returned home from eating out, he had his new hat on already — this one cost freaking $39!

This one does fit his little head much better, but I still feel sad that my gift wasn’t good enough. But seriously? A forty dollar hat?? Jeez.

The sponsor my brother’s coach found for their traveling soccer team is Hooters [great choice, sir. I hate you]. They had a team dinner there after practice last week, which I loudly protested to my mother. Sure, the kids would all eat for free, and the chain had donated $500 to the team, but really? That really isn’t the wisest place to take a horde of 13-year-old boys, but maybe the partnership was deliberate.

My mother said that the decision to go would rest on Larry, and he appeared be in favor of eating with the rest of his team. Since my father was traveling that week, I decided to join them at Hooters so I wouldn’t have to eat at home by myself, and also to see what the restaurant was actually like. When my brother found out that I was going with them, however, he immediately voiced his opposition.

“Why are you coming with us?”
“Because I don’t want to eat dinner by myself…”
“I’m not going, then, if you’re coming.”

His swift change in attitude was inexplicable, and I ended up staying home. This was a good thing, I suppose, since I would have been wildly out of place. My mother later told me that the group separated into three tables — boys, mothers and fathers — and that the small table of women at which she sat consumed three large pitchers of beer, none of which was her contribution. Those soccer moms really know how to put it away…

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This summer break at home, I can hardly contain my contempt for my brother. He’s rude, ungrateful and undisciplined. We usually have an amiable relationship — I love Larry to pieces — but this time around, I can’t stnad him. This is, I believe, partly due to his impending adolescence; he’s becoming the moody teenager that he’s bound to be for the next five years.

I have realized that although he and I have been through many of the same family struggles, there are aspects to our personalities and upbringings that are fundamentally different. In regards to upbringing, the one major difference lies in my mother, since my dad’s role in childrearing has been minimal at best.

When I was younger [and this still applies, for the most part], I was scared shitless of my mom. One time in elementary school in Downer’s Grove, she came to the bus stop to pick me up after school, which was rather unusual. Being the impressionable young child that I was, I tried impressing the older kids by implementing a new word I had learned. “Oh, there’s my dang mom.” They laughed, and repeated this to my mother as we all exited the bus.

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