Barry

Barry is my brother. He is absolutely incredible. Absolutely. Incredible.

The first picture of Barry and I shows us sleeping on the blue carpet of our home in Freeport, Maine. Barry's arm is wrapped around me in a gesture of philladelphy. Nobody would guess that we had collapsed in this posture after hours of wrestling.

That is the way it was, and is. We are too close to let our expressions of love for each other be limited to niceties.

I remember Barry first and most as an explorer. He loved to tramp -- a word which perfectly describes the process of exploring woods and fields filled with slanting sunshine, raspberry thickets, and danger unknown. On the steepest parts of the ravine behind our house, Barry would sled and mountain bike in places where nobody else had tried, and nobody else would follow. Barry climbed huge pine trees all through the woods, and once fell about 60 feet through the limbs to the ground below when a dead branch broke under his feet. He was ok, except for a badly lacerated back. That was a miracle.

Barry is shy. When he was little, he gave strangers a berth as wide as the radius of mom's skirts. To say that went away isn't wrong, it's just untrue; Barry now meets new people with the same deep courage and style that he uses in steep places.

When Barry was 9, he took the laser (a 16-ft sailing dinghy) out by himself. When he was about a mile out from our dock, the boat dumped. Barry dry-capsized, which means that he climbed over the vertical side of the boat and sat on the centerboard. He wasn't heavy enough to right the boat, so he had to wait until a lobsterman caught sight of him, and used his trap hook to grab the tip of the mast and set the boat upright.

The two of us used to play "animals" every day. "Animals" was a full theatrical production managed by Barry, the players were a large chest of stuffed animals. The lines of the production were predictable in only one way: it was always war. In every other respect, every day was a breathtaking masterpiece on its own. Barry created every animal with layer upon layer of personality, and then contrived to execute complicated plotlines, impersonating each animal personally. I loved every minute of it, I was absolutely enthralled.

Barry was a pioneer of the stair-jumping phase which I talked about in my post on Paul. He still holds the record for the highest jump -- that jump incindentally damaged some nearby wallboard. I always used that as a excuse to avoid the jump myself.

Barry got a two-man tent, and we eventually decided to camp out in the woods. We set up our tent in the daylight, and then made our way by flashlight to our tent at night. Our tent was snug with sleeping bags, pads, and piles of blankets. Our boisterous conversation quickly gave way to a pervading silence. I was immediately afraid, and after 10 agonized minutes, I let Barry know it. He bolstered my courage with a generous infusion of his own, and we might have lasted 'til the morning except for the sudden scream of a screech owl. We fled.

One winter night, Barry and I donned two of our Dad's white lab coats hanging in the laundry room, and went by moonlight on our cross-country skis to spy out the far fields which had recently been sprinkled with some new houses. When we got close, we took off our skis and crept through the darkness past the houses. I was thrilled to be doing something so dangerous with my brother.

I loved rooming with Barry in college. He faced challenges there with incredible courage. He was an explorer. I'm ordinately proud of my brother because:
1. He has arrived
2. He still explores

Barry is ... a brother. I love him so much.