There, you demanding lot: a picture.
(Nick, naturally, waits to take the closeups until my hair is undone and my makeup nonexistent.)



My sloth so often manifested, I move to add to his list of charges the photographs page...the photographs page which has been neglected for so long a time that I fear the dust has grown great upon the gallery glass and I do not see a restoration forthcoming. This does not have to be a sad affair, and I will strive to illustrate the text with greater regularity—I personally believe a blog to be more interesting with pictures; you are right my faithful readers, inputers—but do review the opening clause to the first sentence. Thank you; I apologize in advance.

And so, with this theme, it took a mere 14 days of laptop internet non-responsiveness for the two us to have a sit-down, a sort of heart-to-hard drive, sitting Indian style and singing "Kumbaya" while chewing Dubble Bubble and painting each others toenails. (Talk about culture overload.) I am happy to have my baby back, happy to have my Adobe CS2 Suite back, happy to have a connection to my precious camera available to me once more. Mostly though, I am happy that Nick and I can communicate via email from one floor to another, saving the need to talk at all.

I'm sitting in a private suite, courtesy of a contact of Nick's, and I suppose by now, one of mine. Steve told me last weekend when we were down for the Big Ten Tournament that he was attracted to me, except my hair was too cropped, the color too light, and my nails too short. I was deeply flattered. Steve had brats catered in earlier, during the first game of our session (Georgia Tech vs. UNLV), as well as wings and a veggie platter. The refrigerator had been stocked prior to our arrival with soda, beer, and water. Thirty minutes ago, I was sprawled out on the swanky couch watching the hi-def television hanging against the opposite wall.



Along with Steve, Nick and I were with one of his coworkers who had proclaimed excitedly that this was definitely the way to watch basketball. Many of these sentiments are gone at the moment, though. My stomach is twisted and nerves are making my ankles believe they are equipped with the pelvis of Elvis as my feet seize erratically. We are nearing the end of the first half of play, and our beloved Badgers have not once had control of this game. They are the number two seed, playing the fifteen...we were hoping for a blowout. Blowouts are no fun to watch until it's your team that's blowing the other one out of the water. Our foursome cheered sarcastically when our boys got their tenth point.



A dunk from Tuck as the buzzer rang for the end of the half, and we had a whopping nineteen points to show for our twenty minutes of play. I began to dread our long ride home from Chicago, IL...The car would be completely silent and oh so tense, you know it would. We watched another game from the TV on the wall and silently wondered if maybe we should just leave for home now, beat the traffic.

The next half began much the same as the last ended, and I sat there and wished that that last slam dunk in the first half had come instead in the beginning of this one, keeping both the team and the crowd pumped...eager for more. But then, something started to happen, something unexpected after 30 minutes of game time (and lord only knows how long it was in real time). Kam Taylor started hitting his marks. 10:42 in the second half, he makes a bucket. at 10:15, we, for the first time all game, tie the fifteenth seeded TAMUCC, and also for the first time all game, we're not being completely dominated...and with Kam's three pointer, tying the game up at 47, and his next shot, giving us the lead at 49, the Islanders stopped hitting their marks. Shortly thereafter, we watched the Texas team miss the first two free throws of theirs all game. They looked tired all of the sudden, and I got my first inkling that we might win this one after all. We were on our feet, afraid to hope those last ten minutes, but time and time again, Kam Taylor came through, even scoring 14 straight points at one stretch. He got a total of 24 points that game—more points than we had total at the half—all in the 2nd half of the 2nd half of the game.

We battled back from an eighteen point deficit at one point to win it by 13. The game qualified for an Academy Award for best drama, and it was some of the ugliest basketball I've ever seen...but at the end, when we had it clinched—which wasn't until the VERY end—I was light-headed with the sudden surge of relief, and so glad that Nick had us pose for the below picture before play was underway, when the Badgers first came out to warm up—lord knows we weren't in a chronicling mood once the affair began:



Now, to the next game...but, to be honest with you, after the last two weekends, I'm a little Chicagoed out...but I've loved getting to experience all of this. I've been so fortunate in my first real year of sports-watching to get two of the winningest teams ever in both Badger Football and Basketball. That can seal fanaticism rather nicely.

Oh, Charlie...

I remember our shouting matches, that more often than not became screaming matches, straying toward hair-pulling, biting, and then, later, timeouts. The early years, ah! We hated everything about each other when left too long with just each other...yet, there were pockets of time even as young brats that we bonded and set the mark for all of our cousins and social acquaintances.

The tween and teen years were most difficult, when there wasn't much cause to bond, and we were at the age that you're so busy hating the world, why not throw your brother or sister to the top of the heap—because, you know, I have more acne than I care to accept, my hair has a mind of its own, I want everything while being able to afford nothing, AND IT'S ALL YOUR FAULT.

Then, I moved away...a long ways away...1,200 miles away. The night before I left, you wouldn't even look at me, you didn't say goodbye, saying instead something ugly that, by grace, I've forgotten entirely. It was no skin off my nose, because I didn't care for you anyway. Maybe a small part of me was moving to get away from you.

So there.

Mom kept telling me, as she had for the past two decades at that point, "One day you'll be happy to have a brother, and he'll be happy to have you." You and I would both smile a fake smile when she'd say this, to appease her gentle heart...and then we'd smirk at each other behind her back as if to cheer silently in unison, She thinks I'll LIKE you one day! And then for a startling second it felt as though we were on the same side of the row, and that wasn't right at all.

But, in ways that make no sense to me, the distance brought us close. When you visited me in North Carolina, all I wanted to do was hug you and I even cried the night you, Mom and Dad flew back to Wisconsin. I missed you before the plane had taken off. This whole brother thing was a lot easier to deal with when I hated your stinking guts.

And then, Mom got sick. Once again, we had cause to unite, one that we didn't have to explain to anybody, this uniting of sworn enemies. Mom made us her world, and we made her ours. I don't think that either of us had a higher priority during those years than her, and I don't think that either one of us regrets that decision, nor will we ever.


The past year has been a quiet one. It's harder to go to holiday meals when the woman who made the holiday any sort of special is no longer here...and it felt awkward to be together at times after having constructed such a tripod with Mom...the balance was missing. I will never forget the words you spoke to me when I got to the house the morning she died, and I sobbed that I hadn't gotten there in time. You told me that she was still warm, still like Mom, go say goodbye now, because the room still felt alive with her presence...and then you quickly left the house on that January day as your own tears began to fall.

We've grown to be a lot alike, you and I. We're both quieter, knowing when to listen...we're both tenderhearted, striving to empathize with the world...our touch is light and our voices soft...see, the "problem" has been that we both carry so much of Mom in us. (Which, considering our heated death matches, makes me wonder about her relationship with her sisters, know what I mean? Or are we blaming that one on Dad, who used to roll around on the floor, wrestling, with his mother when he wouldn't eat his green beans or clean up his room?)

But it's better now, I feel it...don't you? It's a joy to see you now, a subtle hint like an eyelash fluttering over my cheek, I feel the smile tapping the side of my mouth, vying for attention...and I know it's because I have you, I have a brother. Someone who shared something incredibly hard with me and the only one who can only feel that particular emptiness the same way that I do...someone that will be there for me always, no matter which direction life goes...Charlie, I DO like you—I'll even go so far as to say that I love you.

So there.