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Racing
toward love Strapped! Mommy
Diarist The
Guilty Bride Introducing
… IndieEtiquette Bride,
Unhinged When
Wedding Dresses Attack! Book
Review: The Artful Bride The
B-word My
Best Friends' Weddings When
Bachelors Go Bad O
Brother Wed Art Thou The
Mythology of Marriage A
Marriage of My Own Why
I Popped the Question My
Wedding, My Way Happily
Ever After Am
I Really That Single? -----------
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My little brother's getting married. So why is everyone worried about me?
Spring 2002 | In late October, I had coffee with my father at a caf˙ across from Lincoln Center. He was in from Philadelphia for the afternoon, and I'd joined him to kibbitz about my job, hear about the three-legged pit-bull he and my mother just adopted, and tell him about how New York had been altered in the weeks after September 11. Instead, he was hell-bent on talking about his new favorite topic: my younger brother Aaron's recent announcement that he was engaged to a woman he'd known for just six months. I had been blown away by the solemn reverence with which Aaron and Karel's engagement had been treated by my usually-sensible parents. At 23, Aaron has long been beloved for things like the time he ate vomit in exchange for a cigarette, and his talent for turning his furry stomach into a talking puppet named Juan. The ease with which one verbal exchange had transformed my fuck-up kid brother into a man whose future was worth speculating about was already beginning to annoy me. As far as I could tell, this wedding, and the partnership that would ensue, was going to be fun but not serious. Initially, Aaron and Karel said they didn't even want a ceremony or reception. They wanted to throw parties in New York, Philadelphia, Texas, and Florida – their various home states – and have "Aaron and Karel's Wedding Tour" t-shirts printed. Karel was going to design her own simple dress. They were going to serve cheesesteaks. They were kids. What was it about a ring and a verbal commitment that made people treat them as if they were grown ups? More grown up than me? I rolled my eyes and submitted to my dad's conversation, hoping that I could at least get in some catty news about what my Baptist grandmother thought of her new tattooed in-law. But instead of letting loose with mirthful stories, my typically acerbic father went all wet-eyed. I squirmed and tried to make a crack about whether Aaron had yet realized that he'd have to wear an actual suit to this event, and if it would deter him. My dad just shook his head in something that looked like surprised happiness. "I'm not worried about them," he said with a little catch in his voice. "I'm just so proud that he's figuring out what he wants in life and making it happen." Then he turned his full attention to me. "But I am worried about you. We just want you to be as happy as your brother, and right now, you don't seem happy." Huh? For all 27 of my years here on earth, I have fought hard to elicit from my parents even mild anxiety about my well-being. The fight has rarely been successful. Not because they don't love me. But since Aaron's birth, there's been very little worry left over for anyone else.
But I hadn't imagined that the kid would actually take such a step. I had even less idea of what was in store for me once he'd done it. I was a great kid. I got good grades, had responsible friends, experimented and pushed boundaries in only the healthiest ways. When I needed money, I got a job scooping ice cream. As a teenager I was foul-tempered and intense, but I suspect that even this was a comfort – there was never any guessing about what was bothering me. At two, Aaron jettisoned his walker off the top of a flight of stairs, landing directly on his head. It was only the beginning. His self-designed yearbook page featured a photo of him in boxer shorts, and quotations from past report cards, like "Aaron needed a miracle on his final exam and the C he achieved was nothing less." He was famous for grabbing smoke breaks in the midst of cross-country meets, took something in ninth grade that made him think he was being chased by an evil bubble, and once called me at 3 am to fetch him from a local wood pile where he'd been hiding while his friends got arrested for an out-of-control house party. My parents' worry was palpable as he cultivated suspiciously scruffy hairstyles, and stalked around in a shroud of Marlboro-perfumed silence. After we left home, our patterns barely changed. I went to a good college and then to New York where I got a series of good jobs, made solid friends and had ordinarily unhealthy relationships with narcissistic commitment-phobes. Aaron went to art school, where he may or may not have had girlfriends. No one in the family ever laid eyes on one. We can confirm that he did no work, that his grungy apartment was humid with bong water, and that he mainlined money. After his sophomore year, he dropped out and moved into my Brooklyn apartment where he wore a new groove in the couch, became an avid Passions fan, held down a couple of unpaid internships, and slept with several of my friends. He showed up to his very first New York job interview – at a children's publishing house – with a split lip and black eye after a drunken fight with a skinhead. During this period I eased into my favorite role: deeply put-upon sister. I was paying for this kid's life with my own minimal salary, hosting his friends, cleaning up after him. But I could not goad my parents into sympathy for my economic or emotional stability. Over and over, I heard the same refrain: "We don't worry about you, it's your brother we're worried about." "You have never had any trouble taking care of yourself; Aaron is another story." "Your life is going to turn out just fine, I'm more concerned about what's going to happen to that lump who lives on your couch." Well, that lump is getting hitched. He doesn't have a job, a home, or a degree, but all that stuff pales in the warm presence of Karel – a patient soul who will presumably spend the rest of her days ironing out those details. So now that Aaron is settling down, the family has decided to belatedly turn their attention to me. At Thanksgiving, a thoughtful call to my Nana from my boyfriend's family house began with the expected "Your brother is really getting his life in order, so I hope that I'll hear good news from you soon!" It ended, more menacingly, with her admonition that "those looks of yours aren't going to last forever, and remember – you're not getting any younger!" My boyfriend and I broke up several weeks later. This just made things worse. My parents began to call more regularly and ask probing questions about what it was I really wanted to do with my life. I have no idea what I want to do with my life. Whatever I'd been doing had actually seemed more than adequate until now – until there was an engagement to compare it to. I smoke out the window, feed the cats, read the Times, do good work that occasionally gets appreciated, and aim for honest relationships with friends and men. That's what people are supposed to do in their 20s, right? That's what kept my family calm – proud even – for years. But now that they've seen a son who has defied expectations and become "really happy" they seem to think that this option is available to me too – like deciding to put cheese on a burger. "Yes, I'll take my average over-worked, under-paid, confused early adulthood, but could you please throw on some real happiness?" And all the caution, self-analysis, and responsible behavior that kept me in straight-A's and rent money until now is clearly just an impediment to the kind of fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants romance that Aaron has unearthed. When Karel modeled her new coffee-stained but gorgeous Vera Wang sample dress ($300!), Aaron was slumped back on the same couch he used to inhabit. She did a little twirl. "Baby, your hogans are off the hook in that dress," he said appreciatively. "Aw, baby, that's so sweet," she replied with a smile. I wish that I could master whatever alchemy Aaron used to turn his once-dubious existence into the gold-standard for modern male maturity. I wish that my parents would go back to telling me that they're not worried, that everything's going to turn out just fine for me, because you know, sometimes I get a little tense about it myself. I wish that my grandmother would forget I ever had a boyfriend so I could stop lying to her about us still being together. But mostly I hope that I can endure the white-hot spotlight of my family's worry with the same kind of patience that Aaron did for all those years – and emerge from it with the same grace and good fortune. Oh yeah. And I wish someone would tell me my hogans were off the hook. ----------- Rebecca Traister is a staff writer at the New York Observer. ----------- Do you have sibling issues? Talk about them in Kvetch |
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Until,
it seems, the day that he popped the question to Karel, a tattooed lingerie
designer/bartender from Texas. She was Aaron's first serious girlfriend
since he'd come to New York four years ago, and I'd loved her on sight.
I'd joked many times during their six months together that he should marry
her immediately before she came to her senses.