A magnitude 6.4 earthquake shook up our 4th of July celebrations and reminded me of my brother, Bob. Earthquakes, patriotic holidays and brooms always do that.
From birth, Bob's cool factor was 9.5 on the Richter Scale. While I was reading Nancy Drew and collecting butterflies, he was riding dirt bikes and building bottle rockets. Girls were in hot pursuit, sometimes pretending to like me in order to get to him. They dropped me like a wet toad when they realized I wasn't the way to his heart. We lived in different worlds, I was make-believe, he was the real deal. When we got our driver's licenses, I raced around town pedal to the metal in the family's Rambler station wagon. Bob cruised the boulevard real slow in a vintage car he'd rebuilt. Jealousy honed my razor sharp, sibling rivalry tongue, but he was just too cool to cut.
I was in my third year of high school when he entered Army boot camp. Girls swooned and pointed out that Bob wore the uniform better than Elvis Presley; it was true. After graduating boot camp, he came home on leave and, with no effort, usurped my newly acquired position as eldest sibling. The TV and favorite chair and first dibs were his again. Furious, I blasted him with "I hope you die!" Four words that wouldn't unsay. He tossed a broom at me. "Here, you'll need this." When the broom touched my palm, I heard the Wicked Witch of the West screeching in my mind, "I'm melting! Melting!" Bob shipped off to Vietnam and I sank into a sulfurous puddle of regret.
During his months in a war zone, my family baked cookies and wore POW bracelets and wrote letters and didn't sleep and listened to Walter Cronkite report the staggering numbers of missing, wounded, and dead on the evening news. I swept the floor more than needed; a reminder of who I didn't want to be. Our cousin, Joe came home from Vietnam in a flag-covered coffin. Bob came back with a bronze star for heroism in combat.
He had been home on leave for a day or two when a 6.6 magnitude earthquake rocked California. My brother's voice thundered above the noise of groaning earth and crashing dishes, "Raid!" "Raid!" "Raid!" He took command with ferocious efficiency, kicking open bedroom doors, rousting us out of our beds, and herding us underneath the dining room table. His bellow shook me to the core, the hair stood up on the back of my neck. "RAID!" A visceral, ragged word; a black hole filled with the violent, ravages of war.
Bob went on to Germany, was honorably discharged, raised kids, worked for NASA, traveled, lost his beloved wife to cancer, retired. He's still cool; still turns the lady's heads. I'm not jealous anymore—but yeah—I still need a good sweeping now and then.
P.S. While writing this we had another whopper-- magnitude 7.1.
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