One Version of Family

Alas, I am a half-breed.

Her fair-skinned, black-haired, twinkling blue-eyed Scottish gentility was attracted to his swarthy, roguish, black-haired, bedroom-green-eyed Sicilian intensity. Their 2 children reflect their genetic melding.

My brother and I both have dark brown hair and pale green eyes, are both Scottish-tall, are both intense but with (mostly) lovely manners that allow us to behave in public – although we share little else. My softly curling hair is lit with red, his is sleek and nearly black. I am light with freckles that don’t protect me from the burning sun, while he is dark and tans deeply on the first sunny day of spring. I grew up to be my mother’s politically and socially liberal shoot, while he became my dad’s conservative sprout with immovable roots. I moved from city slick to city slicker; he left the city behind for the farm-quiet of country life.

We are only now in the process of repairing a seven-year rift during which we have had very little contact. September 11, 2001 gave him the desire to call me, and me the desire to answer. We’ve both mellowed a bit through our seven-year silence – he seems willing to acknowledge that my world will always be filled with people and cultures of color, homosexuality, and a freedom I think he envies. I am willing to understand that all he probably wants is to pull the wagons around his family, guarding them from whatever attack on them he fears.

Can’t wait to see what happens next.