The Idea of an Essay, Volume 4

Narrative & Memoir 39 in the winter. After the fifth or sixth time I said goodbye, knowing I wouldn’t see him for months and months, I was finally able to speak through the tears to whisper a goodbye. But even after all the times I run at full speed down the train platform and am met with a hug frommy hero, I have never successfully stopped the lump that forms in my throat. My friend, my leader, my brother, is home. As I grew older, I came to recognize more and more traits Andrew had mastered. He kept the peace. He knew when to love and when to fight. When he spoke, Mom and Dad listened. When everything was going wrong at home, even though he was hundreds of miles away, he was the one who wrote me a long email saying how proud he was of me. He would call me randomly when I was at my wit’s end because God had placed me on his heart, and my big brother was faithful to heed the call. He parried with my pain, whittling it into the shadows. Parry, block. Parry, block. Andrew clears his throat again over the phone, bringing me back to reality. I’m sitting in Cedarville University’s Health and Sciences Center. I can smell the chemicals that waft through the building. The seat is rough cotton and nylon beneath my restless fingertips. My brother is still on the phone that is now hot, clutched in my hand. “No, we haven’t talked on the phone for a month.” My mind spins. Andrew-- responsible, long-suffering, a man after God’s own heart-- is someone who isn’t trusted?The accusations piling up around him, laid there by Angie’s parents, are humiliating and insulting. Andrew and Angie’s relationship is perhaps the most monitored relationship I have ever seen. My brother rarely texts Angie and sends all complicated topics through email. If they were allowed to talk on the phone, it was for twenty minutes per week, and Angie’s mom had to be in the room to hear the whole conversation. The unrealistic expectations and regulations placed on the relationship were enough to make me livid; I didn’t know how my brother was able to keep his calm. In my moment of anger and indignation, I could feel my chest physically aching for the emotional agony that my older brother was enduring. For months, the relationship had been on and off, both smooth sailing and a rickety rollercoaster, with little warning and barely any communication between each transition. Andrew never complained, but in the past few phone calls to me, his voice had been getting more and more worn through. He had been experiencing