So here's a prose poem for this Sunday -- an ode to my brother as he embarks on this crazy new journey, an ode to our childhood {which he made pretty sweet}, and perhaps also an ode to the simple fact that time happens. Whether we want it to or not.
Summer, 2001 ~
"James and I were at it again: a one-on-one game of Little-Tikes basketball staged in the arena that was the screened-in porch at the back of the house. With warm-ups behind us, James (who doubled as the official) blew his whistle and fumbled with the worn-off start button on his cereal box prize of a stopwatch, and the game commenced -- as well as the trash talk. Dressed in hastily scrounged-up singlets from Dad’s glory days, we shot from this spot or that, the duct-tape hash mark just behind the Kool-Aid stain marking the beloved three-point line: the “make it rain” zone, worn thin from James’s never worn-out confidence. If James felt extra ambitious, he also tried his hand at commentating, the play-by-play somehow always finding itself oddly - and heavily - in his favor: “Did someone call the police? ‘Cause the SWAT team just arrived.” “Better just call him the J-man.” “One second she was lookin’ at him, the next he was hangin’ on the rim.” We duked it out until the rim fell off from one too many Vince Carter-inspired dunks or until Mom looked out and shouted that it was not safe for me “to be thrown around like that.” Like clockwork, James then declared himself the champion, and we shoved our way back into the house to give Dad a recap. And he, setting down his work, soaked up every last word of it. In that house, basketball trumped all."
All the best to my brother & friend.
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