My brother, S., moved back home right before Christmas. I hadn’t seen or talked to him on any sort of regular basis for ten years, and wasn’t sure what to think. I’ve been sort of a pseudo-only-child all this time – ever since I was seventeen and he was eighteen. (OK, so that’s hardly a “child” by any stretch of the imagination. But you know what I mean.)

It turns out that he’s fabulous to have around. He doesn’t do dishes much, but he does something better: he helps with the remembering. We’ve sat around talking during the past weeks, and we remember things together that I haven’t thought of in years – like the Crawdad Incident.

When we were kids, we both kept aquariums all over the house. Once, when I was off at piano lessons or something, he went down to the creek and caught a bunch of crawdads for us to keep as pets. He gave the very biggest, most lobster-like one to me, and solemnly christened it Jolly Wolly Holiday. I don’t remember what happened to the rest of them, but Jolly lived with us for longer than any crawdad should. He rummaged around in the floor of his tank while guppies and angel fish swam above his crawdaddy head, and seemed quite satisfied with the situation. Eventually, though, maybe it wasn’t so satisfactory for him – he developed wanderlust, and figured out how to slide the top off the tank just enough to crawl over the side and drop onto the floor. He’d skitter around in the carpet until one of us noticed and tossed him back in.

My mother has rather poor eyesight, which she has passed on to me. Then as now, it was her habit to arise at five and wander, bleary and contact-less, into the kitchen. It was while in that state one morning that she heard a clacking behind her on the linoleum, and turned around to find a large, blurry crustacean clicking its way toward her, waving its pincers. Her screech woke the rest of us, and S. ran into the kitchen to save her and Jolly from each other.*

In fact, that’s how Jolly eventually met his Maker – he climbed out and went gallivanting one day, and got lost behind the couch, where there was no water. His was an arid death, and a stinky one. But he lived a noble and adventurous life. Jolly made the most of things.

S. is a year and a week older than me, almost to the hour. Happy 28th, bubba! I love you.

*My mother would probably like for me to point out that she is not the type who usually needs saving from crawdads, or reptiles, or bugs. But who can be expected to react well to such a thing at such an hour?