For Thanksgiving, I visited my family in the Midwest. After the feast, my mom taught my brother & I a line dance (neither of us knew any line dances). Later, the three of us, along with my aunt, played a couple board games from the 80s that were designed for teenage girls: Slumber Party and Girl Talk. Slumber Party involves rolling 5 curlers into your hair, then adding or removing curlers as the game progresses. My brother followed the rules without complaining, while other people laughed at him. I remarked that he was a good sport to play along with us, and he reminded me that they were his games- he bought and owned them.
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
One of my pick-me-ups is reading stories about unlikely animal friends. There’s the dog who splashes in the surf every morning with the dolphin who swims out to play, the baby hippo who found solace in the 130-year-old tortoise, the pit bull who acts as father to broods of chicks each spring.
Sometimes I’d be jealous while reading these stories, thinking how enriching it could be to be part of an unlikely friendship, two contrasting melody lines blending into an elegant harmony. A few weeks ago, I realized that my brother is an unlikely animal friend. We don’t have the same hobbies or hang out in the same circles. If we hadn’t been related, I probably never would have talked to him or gotten to know him. Here, I already had what I’d been wishing for- I just didn’t recognize it.