I know I said I wasn't going to talk about my brother any more, but this is more about me than him, so I'm contradicting an earlier entry. For those of you joining us late, my brother, who is mentally unstable, and who was a member of a cult for many years, has been sentenced to three years in jail for having been caught with a car trunk full of marijuana in the pestilent backwaters of Idaho. (It was originally slated to be five, but he got off lightly.) He's recently been transferred to the maximum security section of the state pen. He's due to be moved to a medium security area after about three weeks. I believe this is always the rotation, and not an indication of the severity of his sentence or his behavior. I suppose they do it to impress upon the prisoners just how grim it can be if they're insubordinate, and to get an idea of what kind of prisoners they've just processed. My brother seems to have been convinced by the experience. He's planning to be a model prisoner so he can get out of that situation as soon as possible. Thank god he's showing a little sense at last.
Not, you understand, that I have heard this from him. I have had no contact with him since the beginning of this sordid tale. I simply do not have anything to say. Well, no, that's not true. I have nothing supportive or kind to say. Therefore, I have not written to him. I think he brought this on himself with eyes wide open, crackpot religious beliefs and paranoid suspicions about the Russians not withstanding. He knew exactly what he was doing. I have no sisterly impulse to reach out to him in his hour of need. I was prepared to fly to Idaho for his trial if my dad wanted a family member there, but in the event it wasn't necessary. My brother pled guilty and took his lumps. I would have thoroughly despised him if he'd done anything else, even though it hurt my father very much to know he was going to go to jail.
The problem I'm running into is my family doesn't understand why I haven't written to my brother. My sister Sarah, the one (there's always one) who is most devoted to keeping in touch with anyone remotely eligible to be called family, has been writing to him regularly. Mary Lou and Dad phone him as well as write to him. This leaves me, and I can't bring myself to do a thing.
I have a well developed sense of loyalty, and I'm quite clear on the concept of owing a duty to the people who raised you. You get your life, you get shelter, you get food, you get love and affection, you get an education, and then you pay it back by being useful when asked, and sacrificing personal desires if necessary. The lengths one goes to in the name of this debt vary from individual to individual, thus providing much fodder for literature and not a few cultural stereotypes, but there it is. Duty to the parents, sometimes interpreted as duty to the family. In my case, I'm pretty indifferent to the family at large, and I'm not all that attached to my siblings. We're just too different. I care deeply about my father and his wife. I would do anything for them: donate bone marrow, pay their rent, watch cringingly bad tv shows they love, whatever. Writing to my brother doesn't count as doing something for them. To his credit, Dad hasn't cast it in that light. He just thinks I ought to do it because I'm family. So does Sarah.
I can't. My brother doesn't feel like family any more. He hasn't for years. He's a stranger, and odd, and makes poor decisions, and isn't someone I want around under the best of circumstances. I don't feel I'm letting him down by not writing to him. We haven't been close to each other in years, we barely interact once every five years or so for an evening, and we're both quite clear about how little we find the other to our taste. I cannot find in me the urge to share any part of myself with him. That means I have nothing to say in a letter, not even the lightweight natterings I sometimes put in this diary. What could it mean to him except brief diversion from an unpleasant situation? He could read a book instead.
Bother. This all sounds like justification. That doesn't make it less true, but still. I'm going to keep thinking about it. Maybe I'll discover an altruistic part of me that can overcome my general reluctance to communicate with my brother. I'm not holding my breath.
