BROTHERLY LOVE [Sun, 8-24-25]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Family Relations of An Old Man—BROTHERLY LOVE [Sun, 8-24-25]

 

August is my brother’s birth month, so I think about him a lot in August, because I really like having a brother. Jim tries to lay low when his birthday comes around, not because he’s vain, but because he doesn’t enjoy attention. He’s a hermit. Married—to the world’s second-most patient woman—but a hermit, nonetheless.

He’s kind of like Daniel Boone—seeing the smoke from his neighbor’s chimney means people are too close, even in the environs outside Santa Fe.

So, he is renewing his passport. He lives in New Mexico and wants to start spending winters in Old Mexico. I guess all the folks from there are now in detention centers in the USA, so he won’t have to deal with people.

I figure if you’ve seen one Mexico, you’ve seen ‘em all, but I’m probably prejudiced because of that bad burrito.

Since he and his wife will be together, he can’t name her as his emergency contact in the US, and they don’t have children, so he’s named me as the emergency contact.

I have looked up the town where they will be staying and gotten a list of “The 15 best things to do in…” I figure when they call me to come down there, I’ll need some stuff to do while they are figuring out if it’s a bailable offense.

It may sound like I’m expecting trouble, but… well, I did decide to watch “The Magnificent Seven,” for pointers, just in case. He’s 9 years younger than I, and you know how little brothers are.

It’s not that Jim intends to be a trouble-maker. In fact, he tries to stay out of trouble, by avoiding people. But people sometimes misunderstand Jim’s silence, think he is planning something nefarious in all that quiet.

It’s the McFarland hermit gene; all McFarlands have it, especially the men. Jim and I haven’t spoken to each other in years. We have a good relationship. We love each other. We even like each other. But we live a long way from each other, and neither of us likes to talk on the phone. We’ll talk, though, if there’s a good reason to say something, like “I’m in jail in Mexico…”

I was the youngest child in our family for 8 years. My sister, Mary Virginia, was four years older. I enjoyed the perks of being youngest. Then Margaret Ann came along. I wasn’t happy about being displaced from the throne of youngest, especially by another sister. [1] If I had to have a younger sib, I wanted it to be someone I could teach baseball, a brother. So I was quite delighted when James Francis entered the world 18 months later. The only problem was that he hated baseball.

I hope I haven’t made you jealous. It’s understandable, if you don’t have a brother. I don’t just love my brother; I love having a brother. When people brag about how much money and fame they have, I whisper to myself, “But I have a brother!”

John Robert McFarland

1] Don’t worry. It didn’t take long to accept Margey. She was awfully cute, and if your little sister adores you as her big brother, you don’t mind being manipulated into doing whatever she wants.