The Idea of an Essay, Volume 4

38 The Idea of an Essay: Volume 4 one else could do, something that made me feel useful and needed. He blocked my pain of being left out or left behind more times than I can remember. Parry, block. I remember one afternoon when I was about ten years old at our family beach house in Massachusetts. My three older siblings and I had gone to dam up the entrance to a creek, preventing the coming tide. The plan was to hold the dam for as long as possible, and just as it broke, get into the water and be swept down the creek in the crash of salty waves. My parents, always concerned for my safety, had charged my oldest brother to watch over me. We had spent the day outside, our skin soaked with more than the sun, crab-fishing. In total, we had caught 107 large crabs by the time the tide tore through our dam. Cut off from reaching our cottage by the water, we had brought a rubber dinghy with us to cross the bay and reach the mainland. However, the dinghy could not fit all four of us and the 107 crabs we wanted to take back as spoils of the afternoon. Andrew, the ever-resourceful eldest, finally decided that I should sit in the dinghy while my three older siblings swam, propelling our vessel. This was a plan that kept me, his little charge, quite safe. That is, safe from the water, but not from the surplus of crabs, waving sharp claws at my fingers and bubbling fierce crab-threats, while scuttling around the dinghy to hide under my legs or scramble over the sides into the water. The trip to the mainland was uncomfortably long for me as I prodded crabs’ claws from my skin and away from my sibling’s hands, which were clinging to the side of the dinghy. Even in this wet, salty, and scuttling environment, my brother’s care for me was evident; he was in the water so that I didn’t have to be. Parry, block. When I was about eight, I remember bursting into tears when my father briefly mentioned at bedtime that Andrew would not be around forever. While shaking my head at my childishness now, I can also understand my reaction. I have never lived in a world where Andrew has not been a huge part of it. The thought of living without him in my day to day life was harsh enough that my eight-year-old self was sure the world was coming to an end. Sure enough, when I was eleven, Andrew left the family. He leapt out of the nest and into Life Action Ministries, a missionary team that travels the country for ten months of the year. For seven years, I had to get used to seeing my brother once in the summer and once