G1-Gratitude

GRATITUDE:   A crone feels gratitude. I’ve always been quick to list my many blessings.
However, for some reason lately I’ve begun to feel intense gratitude. Really feeling the gratitude has made a huge difference in my outlook. Sometimes while I am out on my walk, I lift my arms and say, “Eternal Spirit, Mother, Father, God, Thank you.”  Then I call out those things that fill my soul with thanksgiving. I mostly do this when there is no one about to hear, but if I am overheard, it won’t matter. It is hard to embarrass a crone.

  

    In It’s a Wonderful Life, George Bailey has a chance to see what his world would have been without him. Today I am wondering how my entire life would have been different without a certain person. His name was Gerald Wayne Hoover, and he was my big brother, older by fifteen years. Just about my earliest memory is of Gerald washing my feet in a basin of water. Evidently I, barefooted, had played in dirt or mud. “We’ve got to get out the toe jam,” he said, and I giggled each time he swiped the cloth between my toes.

     We were both blond and the only two of the eight children born to our parents who did not inherit their dark- brown eyes. Besides removing toe jam Gerald was willing to play subordinate roles in my games. I was often Tom Mix, the hero from my favorite radio program. While I rode my stick-horse around the house on dangerous missions, Gerald was stationary, playing the part of Tom’s sidekick, the villain, and even Tom’s female cook, whose name was, I believe, Chloe. I would pause in front of him, whisper the name of his character, and wait for him to look up from his book with the appropriate response.  

      There were lots of goodbyes and lots of homecomings during my early years with Gerald. I remember vividly the first goodbye. I was barely three, standing on the porch with my family. The porch had a damaged board not far from the step. Unable to watch him go down the step and toward the car, I kept my eyes on the broken wood. When I could bear the goodbyes no longer, I slipped back into the house, took Gerald’s pillow from his bed, and crept under a dresser with a long cloth. Hidden, I buried my face in the pillow, breathing in the smell of my brother’s Vitalis Hair Tonic. I also remember waking in the middle of the night or wee hours of morning to find Gerald, newly home from that first sojourn, sitting on the edge of my bed, staring down at me.

      Far too young and sensitive for what lay ahead, he served in Korea on a LST. Once during a time of great distress and rare openness, he talked to me about picking up the dead and dying. The agonies of war coupled with trauma suffered very early, were, I believe, responsible for his limitations. Gerald never married. He could not show affection to grownups and was unable to handle any kind of emotionally charged situation. After I grew up, he never hugged me. He paid a good part of my college tuition and sent me money when I was a young mother, staying home with my babies. He also had savings accounts for those babies when they went to college. Gerald never waited to be asked for help.

      I cannot recall his ever saying he loved me, but the love I saw in those gray-blue eyes was a constant in my life, so I wrote the first draft of this post on the anniversary of his birth. Gerald died a few years ago, quietly and alone just as he would have wanted it. Do I get messages from him sent from beyond that curtain? No, my brother was far too private and unobtrusive for such an intimate exchange, no poking about in anyone’s subconscious for him.

     The house where I live stands as solid as on the day it was finished 89 years ago, mostly because of the foundation. Gerald was part of my stone foundation. These days, the big Navy duffle that he called a seabag hangs on the back of my writing chair. Made of timeworn white canvas, it feels right as I lean against it. Thank you, big brother, and thank you, God, for giving Gerald to us.