I just turned my heater on.
Winter is coming…
Date: November 9, 2015
Crane: 838
Days Spent on Project: 993
Location: NW Portland, OR
Person I would have sent it to: TBD
Music I listened to while sewing: Still listening to The Colourist. Still loving “Little Games.”
Although I currently have old episodes of The Twilight Zone playing on Netflix.
Thoughts/Feelings behind the block: My brother has been a father now for… well… just over three weeks.
In the past three weeks, the person who I call my brother, and he who calls me brother, is a new person.
My brother (and his wife, let’s not leave her out) is a changed person.
Honestly, I’m surprised how smitten my brother is of his son. My brother is a definition of stoic, of a solid person, of dependability, of reliability, of even-keel-ness. My two sisters and I inherited the drama gene in the family; not that we’re a lot, but we are prone to needing support. We just do.
My brother, being the baby, got the support and the love and the hardships that being the youngest bring.
He’s now a father, and his son has transformed him.
I last saw my brother in June of 2014. I had just been offered this job in Portland, and was enthusiastically planning my cross country move and dreaming of how different (i.e. better) my life outside of New York would be. The reason for my visit that weekend in June was to see the new house that my brother and his wife had just bought and were soon to move into. He (and she) seemed more like an adult than I had ever seen him.
I might never know what happens in that minute when the physical introduction of another human being changes your perception of Life. It might not be in the cards for me, to be honest and in no way pessimistic. (I’m a 36 year old gay men with very little prospects here and on the horizon.) It’s quite possible I’ll never have that emotional dawning of dependence and unconditional love that comes from being a parent.
Both my sisters are mothers (a few times over), too.
I’m the last person of my immediate, nuclear family to be untethered by a dependent being. Besides my dog, I don’t have an anchor weighing my down or a balloon to keep me aloft.
Is my career my child?
Is my dog my child?
Is this project my child?
Will I ever have something, a stand-in, like a child?
A boyfriend? A husband? I partner?
I sincerely hope in my life to find something that gives me a reason to change the world or invest in life or make my surroundings just that much better. I’m not bitter. I’m not (too) jaded.
I feel adrift here and now. As proud of my brother as I am, I’m secretly jealous.
The grass is always greener?
Or is he just content enough with his own plot of grass that he doesn’t even noticed mine or anyone else’s?
My nephew is adorable, as is my brother and my sister-in-law.
Someday I hope to have cares beyond the right research and the right costume for a character and budgets and materials.
Someday.
A Thousand Quilted Cranes 