Part of the turbulence I alluded to in my previous entry has to do with young Charles, who is being extremely trying at the moment. I understand from several friends that seventeen-year-olds (at least, American seventeen-year-olds) get this way . . . but I have been feeling frustrated and flummoxed and baffled and depressed by his behavior lately. (I'm happy to talk about this one-on-one, but uncomfortable broadcasting it to the world . . . )

At any rate, astonishingly enough to me, my brother has been an incredible comfort to me during this latest trial. Those of you who have congenial family relationships will have difficulty understanding the immense gulf that has separated me and my brother - for one thing, he's eight years my senior, and for another, our home life was tempestuous at best; when he was able to leave home (when I was ten), he pretty much did so without much of a backward glance. And, too, our mother drove a wedge - then a rock, then a boulder - between us. (My father, had he lived, might have removed it. But we'll never know.)

So it's with some shock and astonishment that I come, at the ripe old age of 47, to understand that my brother understands me on a level that's beneath the bones . . . he, too, was raised by my parents, and he got the same toolbox of emotional responses and possibilities that I did . . . and I find, amazingly, that we exist in a place where the rightness and wrongness of our actions and feelings isn't even an issue. He just gets it. In the latest altercation with Charlie, he understood exactly why I went off the beam and understood precisely what to say to help me cope and do better next time.

(Russ told me this might happen someday, but I didn't believe him.)

So I am really looking forward to Charlie's and my trip to visit his uncle (hence the subject line). And if nothing else comes of this bad patch except that Mike and I get closer, well . . . that's more than enough. More than I ever hoped for; more than I ever imagined. It will be interesting to see how I relate to my brother when I don't feel that I have to hide . . .