My Idiot Brother

When I was growing up, there were two indisputable facts about my world. I had one sister, and we had different dads.  Some summers she would spend her time in Oklahoma to visit her Dad, and I stayed home with Mom.  I envied that time my big sister spent there.  From my perspective, it seemed like she had two lives, and I was super jealous of her and what, to my young mind, seemed like something awesome.  I long dreamed of the day I would meet my father, but I never imagined that I had other siblings.  When I met my dad (which you can read about here), I learned that I had five half brothers and another half sister. My family tree exploded overnight.  Learning their names was overwhelming.  I spent a lot of time repeating the list of names to myself.  Jeff, Jonathan, Amber, Dustin, Jonathon, and Montana. Yes there are two Jons in there.  Also, oddly enough, both of my sisters are named Amber. In all the years since then, there are still two of my siblings I have never met.

3 days in a truck, and
no one was murdered

The first of my siblings I ever met was Jeff.  I was driving from Colorado to Washington and I stopped in Boulder to see him.  I can't tell you how strange it is to meet some random stranger and think, "This is my brother?"   It's the strangest and most wonderful feeling.  I felt a piece of me kind of fill in. We kept in touch and talked on the phone over the years, and he came to visit me in Oklahoma City once, but we weren't ever really particularly close.  As with all my siblings, we were two people, related by chance, connected by common DNA.  When I moved to San Francisco, Jeff was in town and dropped in to visit me.  In the days following that visit, Jeff managed to get himself a job offer in San Francisco as a bike messenger.  For the first time in adult life, I was living in the same city as one of my siblings, and I am so thankful to have had that time with him.

Let me explain Jeff to the best of my ability. He is an eternal child with an ephemeral sense of responsibility.  Sometimes it's the most annoying trait you can imagine.  However, most of the time it's a wonderful thing.  Jeff lives for the moment, it's his thing.  He just lives for what he wants to live for, and he never gives two shits about trying to conform to some societal norm that wouldn't bring him any happiness.  Here is a man, who at nearly 42, lives on a boat with a couple other guys, rides a bike wherever he goes, and makes new friends every day.  He is never stuck in an office against his will, he never feels tied down to any one location for a length of time.  He lives for the moment, and he enjoys life.  I desperately wish I could do that sometimes, but I really like being mostly able to pay my bills and having a nice place to live.  Jeff just doesn't care about that. I think that surviving Lymphoma had something to do with that.  He just appreciates each breath.

When Jeff came to San Francisco, we had spent a minimal amount of time together. Over the coming months we got to know each other well.  We learned a lot about each other, and he taught me about his passion, bicycles.  From day one, he had me hooked.  I never thought my fat ass would get on a bike and enjoy it.  Jeff made it something fun for me, and I fell in love with bikes.  We would peruse Craigslist and eBay together and look for vintage components and other parts, discussing our dream bikes, and dreaming about someday opening a bike shop together.  Jeff gave me something to look forward to each day, he got me excited about something.  I started riding my bike to work, and going for leisurely rides along the Embarcadero, up to Golden Gate Bridge.  Even now that I'm back in Oklahoma, I've entered my first bike race.  This is all thanks to Jeff.  He gave me a reason to get back into something healthy, and something we could share.

During my stint in the Bay Area, Jeff and I saw each other just about every day.  We got to spend a lot of time together, watching tv, playing cards, drinking beers, riding bikes, and arguing like the siblings we never got to be. I had moments of complete rage with Jeff where he just drove me up the wall, but in the end, the most surprising thing happened.  I found one of my best friends for life.  The thing I love most about my brother isn't his devil-may-care attitude toward life, it's not his ability to make friends with a stop sign, or his ability to charm his way into any situation, it's how he loves those closest to him.  My brother would do just about anything for me, if it was within his means.  He takes a lot of abuse from people, and he just takes it, cool as a cucumber. Now I realize how much that meant to me. The best example of this was the day I broke his bike...


Jeff relies on his bike not only as transportation, but as his livelihood.  He needs it to do his job.  One day, Jeff and I were sitting in the coffee shop and he disappeared for a minute to find a random stranger to bum a cigarette off of.  I thought it would be funny to ride off with his bike, and see what exactly he might do in discovering it's absence.  I didn't think this through very well.  I forgot to take into account that his bike's gear system doesn't work quite the same way mine does.  Where my geared bike's pedals spin freely, his single speed fixed gears move as the wheels do.  I didn't make it ten feet before I crash landed his bike with all the force of my fat ass landing right on his handlebars.  If this were my bike, there would have been screaming and cursing.  Not Jeff.  He asked if I was okay, helped me up, then he assessed his bike.  I bent his handlebars, still no reaction, just a deep drag on his cigarette and a shrug of the shoulders.  It was simply a new puzzle to solve.  Just a quick ride to the bike shop where I ordered him a new set of bars, and he borrowed a temporary set from his friends at the shop, never a harsh word about my stupidity.  That's what I love the most about him.  He is kind-hearted, full of childlike curiosity, quick to forgive, and smarter than your average bear.

My brother was the man in my life for the last year, he was the person I could always count on, and he's the person I want to be like when I grow up. So in all the shit that happened in the last year the most positive thing to come out of my year in California is the relationship I was able to foster with that big dummy. There's something strange and stupendous about finding your long lost siblings.  There's something even more amazing in fostering a meaningful relationship with them. I love my brother, and I miss him each and every day. May each and every one of you find something so lovely as sibling rivalry.