I have a brother, two years younger than me. Growing up, we were close enough in age that we played well together. And as with most brotherly relationships, it would all begin by me shooting him in the face with a Nerf gun or him hitting me in the face with a playground ball. Either way, one would provoke the other and the game was afoot.
Together, we did everything that boys typically do together. We fought with each other. We fought other boys in the neighborhood together. We played sports together. If there wasn’t a sport to be played at a given moment, we made up our own games -- still do. Once on a rainy day, we commandeered the living room and played an entire tennis championship, volleying a paper wad back and forth with our hands on our knees: the walls were out and a strip of tape on the carpet was the net.
We had our friends, but when friends were unavailable, we had each other. From the moment he could walk until the day I moved out of the house, that was our relationship. Still to this day, one of us can expect to get hit by the other in the back of the head with a snowball in my mom’s kitchen on Christmas.
Evangeline’s brothers are similar to that: close enough in age that they were simultaneously each other’s best friend and mortal enemy. In fact, most brothers who are close in age like that might say something similar, though the nature of play between sets of brothers may vary.
So when we gave birth to our second son, we had stereotyped visions of what our sons’ relationship would look like. Our boys would ride bikes together. They would play catch together in the yard. They would chase girls with worms together. On a rainy day, they would play games, or make up their own games together. They would hate each other at breakfast and join forces to torment their sister before lunch. They would have that typical brotherly relationship that I had with my brother.
And so, grief confronted me at a rather surprising moment this morning as I compared my experience as an older brother with Nathan's. Nathan and Matthew are as far apart as I am to my brother, yet their sibling relationship is significantly different from ours. All Nathan wanted to do this morning was have a sword fight with Matthew in the living room. If my brother and I had light sabers when we were kids (we weren’t the biggest Star Wars fans), I could have taken the red one, chopped my brothers’ arm off, and expected him to pick up the blue one and fight back. We might have broken a lamp or a window or a bone in the process, but the risk would have been worth it.
All Nathan wanted to do was play with his brother. All he ever wants to do is play with his brother. So he took a light saber, chopped Matthew’s arm off, and tried every trick in the book to get Matthew to chop his arm off too. “Chop me, Matt!” “C’mon, hit me right here Matt!” “Matt, I’m Darth Vador and you’re Luke Skywalker!” “Let’s have a sword fight!”
Matt just doesn’t get it.
He stands there not knowing what to do. He holds a light saber up, like Nathan tells him to do. He stands there while Nathan attacks him (Nathan is a great big brother; his “attacks” are pretty tame). And there is just no response. No fighting back. No chopped arms. No laughing together. No joining forces against their younger sister. Eventually, Matt drops the light saber and finds a car to drive on the couch like he always does.
This is typical. “Let’s play soccer,” Nathan says. So he kicks a ball toward Matt, and Matt just lets it roll on by. “Let’s play basketball,” Nathan says. But Matt doesn’t dribble or shoot or play defense; not because he can’t but because he just doesn’t get it. “Let’s shoot each other,” Nathan says. So he takes a gun, puts another gun in Matt’s hand, shoots Matt, and Matt simply drops the gun to go drive a car on the couch like he always does.
Nathan often tries play with Matt on Matt’s terms. Some days, there is little success, but even on a good day, their relationship is far from reciprocal. As desperately as Nathan tries to play with Matt, it just doesn't happen. Honestly, I would give a kidney if it meant I could replace a window they broke during a sword fight in the living room.
I suppose the silver lining is that while I know what Nathan is missing, he doesn’t. I have to believe that when he is an adult, he will be more well-rounded because Matt is his brother. But in the meantime, it is hard to hear Nathan say, “Matt, try to chop me!” and see Matt just drop the light saber and walk away.
Certainly not all brothers have the kind of relationship that I had with my brother, that my dad had with my uncle, that my brothers-in-law had with one another. Some brothers were too far apart in age to have any kind of meaningful relationship. Other guys grew up with no brothers at all. And you might be tempted to say, “Yeah, well Nathan will have a different kind of relationship with his brother and will be better for it.” That’s certainly true. And maybe it isn't fair for me to impose on my boys the kind of brotherhood I had with my brother. But what I saw today made me grieve. All Nathan wanted this morning was a sword fight with his brother; something Autism has taken away from him.
