Originally published June 6, 2017
My brother hasn't changed a bit since high school, and his 30th reunion was last fall, so it's been a while since he's walked the halls of Spartanburg High School. Most men look very different than they did in high school. I call it beer weight. They get necks, and guts, and jowls, and scratchy faces, so by about age 25, they are incomparable to their high school selves. At my 20th high school reunion I had to ask a couple of men who they were, and when they told me, I could see it, but never would have guessed. Some were even balding, and that was 10 years ago. But Karl still has the same number of hairs on his head, and he might even wear the same jeans. Seriously, the boy needs to update his jeans.
Karl's senior picture. Class of 1986.
He was featured in a YouTube video recently, as an expert cyclist, advising a guy on how to ride up Mount Mitchell really quickly. I watched the video and giggled. At my brother. The expert. At his Southern accent. His Norwegian mannerisms. His sly smile. His obvious contentment. His off-brand humor. His deep joy. Karl (my mom was the German teacher, thus, our names) was a kid of few words. Not that he couldn't speak, he just didn't. Initially, he couldn't see much, either, as my mom found out when he was finally fitted for glasses at the start of elementary school. "The trees have leaves?" he asked incredulously. "There are individual blades of grass?" He had no idea. My mom said she felt a twang of guilt at those revelations, but, being Norwegian, she quickly moved on. We always joke about how few words Karl actually says. These are actual answers to real questions we have asked him. "How are you, Karl?" "Fine." "How's school, Karl?" "Fine." "How was the race, Karl?" "Fine." "How was war, Karl?" "Fine." "How are you feeling after being hit by a car on your bike, Karl?" "Fine." All Fines are followed with a narrowing of the eyes, a tilt of his torso that directs a nod of the head, and sometimes a brief tug on his chin.
Right: See what I mean? He obviously just said "fine," and narrowed his eyes, leaned back, and tugged on his chin. This was Christmas 2016. And those jeans. Please.
My brother and I are 22 months apart, and we were just one grade apart in school. We were both born in Seattle, but raised in South Carolina. So that made us kind of weird. We ate grits on Sunday for breakfast, but pork chops and sauerkraut for New Year's. Not only was my mom the German teacher (which was weird enough on its own), but both my parents were born and raised in the Pacific Northwest. We ate wheat bread and granola and went to a Lutheran church, but also picked our own corn and went to the pool everyday the sun was out on summer break. So our 1970s sensibilities, while ours, may have seemed odd to our native Southern friends. But we also picked up our bit of Southern, if you listen to Karl's long i's in the interview with the cyclist. We played together a lot as little kids. In the summer we made a Matchbox City in the garden, with a superhighway running through the squash to the suburbs in the tomatoes. In winter we constructed lego highrises on Karl's train set. Barbie and Ken dated. Later, he played the cello and I played viola in school orchestras. We shared intel on high school parties. As kids we also fought, like brothers and sisters do. I remember him practicing his karate on me. Not appreciated, and for many years those lessons were forgotten by both my mom and my brother, who denied memory of karate lessons. Oh, I remember.
AHA! There's even a picture of Karl in his karate uniform! And they claim no memory. That's me and my summer hair in the kindergarten ballet getup. Not my talent. I don't know what mom was doing.
Karl didn't say much, but he felt deeply and thought seriously about things. As Lutherans, we went through a stringent confirmation process. Probably the better part of a year spent discussing and memorizing the Catechism. The morning of his confirmation came, when he and just one other would be confirmed in our small church. The cake was specially ordered, and the punch was ready to be poured. Right before church started, Karl said he wasn't sure if he believed all of that stuff, or if he was just believing it because he was told to. He didn't get confirmed that day. I thought that was really brave of him. He held frustration to a boiling point, usually as a result of something like not getting his contact lens in. He famously put a hole in the bathroom door because of ill fitting contacts. As a kid he was an artist. He saw to the most minute details of things. He had this big orange desk that my dad built for him. On it he would construct and paint Army figurines, tanks and planes. One of the figurines, about three inches tall, had 2-day stubble on his beard; another one had 4-day stubble. That's the detail to which he tended to things. Later, that put Karl on the losing team in Pictionary, the game where you draw the word. For the word ring Karl would draw a finger, with knuckles, and cuticles and an emerald cut diamond. I drew a big circle and a little circle, and a couple of words later, the word was guessed. Karl's team was still on the second knuckle. I don't think he draws much any more, on account of the running and cycling that takes so much time. I wish he would. Maybe in retirement he'll draw again. We became friends in college. I thought it was really neat at first; I came to USC the year after him, of course, and he invited me to ROTC parties. I thought he was being hospitable, trying to make sure that I was entertained and introduced to social life on campus. But then, the real reason became clear, when he followed the invitation with: "and bring some girls." The true value of a sister comes into play when you're in ROTC with a bunch of other boys. We also started to talk more in college, our relationship moving away from childhood squabbles and train sets to the topic that really mattered: girls. He would call me (from across campus) and we would talk for an hour about girls; not in a misogynistic way, but in a I-don't-get-them-but-I-want-to-understand way. One of his crushes had broken up with him to explore becoming a nun; I encouraged him to not take it personally. Karl went into the Army after college, to see the world, as their tagline was at the time. He was stationed for four years at Ft. Bragg, NC, about two hours from our home. My dad always laughs about that. He did get to see the Gulf, though, the Persian Gulf, that is, when he went to war there in 1991. As reported earlier, war was fine. (The only story he shared was how you had to poop by taking a chair with no bottom in it as far away from camp as you were comfortable and having a seat. There's a picture of him somewhere, taking a poop in the middle of the desert while reading a paper. That's the kind of picture your Army brethren would take of you.) Karl really lit up, though, when I had Isabel. Man, he was interested in her. He was excited about her, what she was going to do, when she would do it, how it would happen, what milestone would develop next. He could hardly wait. Isabel was lying on her belly, just holding up her head. Some number of weeks old. Karl sat next to her, examining her progress. "When does she walk?" he asked impatiently.
Karl, left, quizzing Isabel about her next developmental milestone. She's two months old, for crying out loud.
In about a year, I told him. "Hm," he said, clearly disappointed. "When does she talk?" Not sure. He continued to examine her new posture of head holding. "When does she do something else?" So I was very excited when, a few years later, Karl and Renee announced they would be having triplets. So perfect for Karl. There would be lots of activity to monitor and look forward to over the years. Conversations now went like this. "How's work, Karl?" "Fine." "How's Renee, Karl?" "Fine." "How are the triplets, Karl?" "Well, Daniel rolled over today and Charlotte made this funny laughing sound and Madeline acts like she knows who everyone is and no one has pooped yet today but we think that's okay because they all had their milk and the nurse said as long as they're drinking enough milk it's fine but we're still waiting for them to poop and so after their bath tonight we'll make sure it happens...." And so on and so forth. We found the topic that made Karl speak. When I watched that video, I was struck by his long i's (a Spartanburg trait we all picked up because we never returned to Seattle), his full head of hair and his thoughtful laugh. Even though I'm a mom, and Karl is a dad (the triplets are 13 years old now), and he's going to turn 50 this year, it's still weird to think about my 50 year old brother, the dad of three kids, who's worked for Milliken for 20-something years (just like his dad did, by the way). I still feel like we're those kids playing Matchbox City in the garden. I have a picture of that, somewhere. I'll find it one day when we move again. There aren't many Bible stories about brothers that have a happy ending. That's because in many families, the relationships between brothers isn't great. Families can really tear a relationship apart. There was the one year Karl and Renee were late for Christmas breakfast because he was changing the oil in his car, but I've forgiven him for that. Maybe it's because Karl is a man of few words, or because he focuses his words on things that matter. Maybe it's because he thinks deeply, and eventually decided to get confirmed; he's now a deacon at First Baptist Spartanburg, and teaches a class regularly. Maybe it's because the Holy Spirit is with him, protecting him through four years at USC, one tour of war, two bike vs. car accidents, and one batch of triplets. Thank you God, for Karl.
Comentarios