The pond outside my window

2004-04-05, 9:00 p.m.

When I go to bed at night I can hear the trickling operetta of our pond just outside my open window, green water rolling down terra cotta rocks piled like a tumor on the soil. I dug out the earth for that pond during a few sweltering July afternoons last year, when the brown clay was like rubber and even a pick could barely pierce the tension. I remember digging up the remnants of the family of five that lived here before we moved in; hairless Barbie dolls, Disney figurines, and various sized bouncy balls that filled the color spectrum. All of them were thrown on the porch to be inspected like and anthropologist�s boon of relics by my curious dog. Where I stood, at the edge of the hole, a deck of faded redwood and rusted nails used to extend another twenty feet into the back yard. And I remember my brother helping out with the pond, laying stones then watching with me while the water spilt into the black plastic lining from a dirty gray hose.

I know when we sat there I could feel us growing up, sort of like I could feel young adulthood creeping up my legs and I could see it sprouting in his eyes, even though I was only 17 and he was nearly 28. But that�s our relationship, a lifetime of growing up together condensed into single moments of significance. He was barely ever in California but I never blamed him, because I never even met his mother, who lived on a farm in the cold forests on the Canadian border. I had my place to grow here in Northern California, deliberately stuck here with my parents, and Chico was like mercury sliding on a full scale map of the United States, but I wish he could have stayed longer on the West Coast.

It�s ridiculous because as I write this I keep thinking about the few memories I have of Chico, and they seem to have a rhythm in time that would fit nicely onto a graph of my life. When I was young he used to come visit for three weeks during my summer vacation, and every year I could see him growing up into what I thought was an adult. I felt like someday I would be just like him, I would look at pictures of him at my age and talk to my mom about how similar we looked, because the only way you could tell it was Chico was from the faded colors in the picture. But when the frequency of his visits lessened and I grew taller than him, I realized we weren�t destined to be the same person, and I came to a painful realization that he was not the perfect human being I had expected to become someday.

The little bits of information he left for me to find gave me clues to who he really was, because it�s so easy to romanticize a person when you see them once a year. I found his bong, which I had thought was a lamp without a light bulb until my dad explained its real name and purpose. I listened on the phone while the plastic voice chimed �Would you like accept a collect phone call from� then a pause, and then my brother spouting �Chico!� Those were the strange calls that grew more awkward with time; he was always in a different state, with some new job and girlfriend, and I was here in California, forking off from his chosen path at my age . I remember listening to stories about him, and finding out why he traveled so much, and I felt like I was slowly passing my hand through a candle flame, where the burn only subsided when I got to see him again in the summer time. To keep away from the negative thoughts I struggled to fight off, I thought about the peculiar nature of our kinship. When he would visit I used to think about the odds of us being brothers, because my dad always had told me stories about his close calls with the law, or with bullets, or with drugs and alcohol.

When I learned about the times in my dad�s life which had stacked the odds in favor of our non-existence, I once again appreciated what friendship I had with my brother. We were one broken stride from never being born. We were one shot glass from remaining dispersed in a thousand million different places in the universe. We shared life, whether he realized it or not. So I had to ignore my sister, who had become attached to the dirty truths that my brother reluctantly admitted to. I had to forget about the fights he had with his dad and my mom, and how he had to leave two weeks early that year. Forgave because we were both part of a temporary defeat of death. So I kept those odds in my head, and I started thinking about what else was could be if the odds were right. I started looking up at night, wondering what the odds of other life could be. What other planets housed a plethora of animal and plant life, and what were the odds that they might some day come visit the Earth� or me. I wasn�t scared by this idea, where events, people, and momentous occasions were all at the whim of some universal crap shoot, I loved the idea, even though I thought any higher being like God was preposterous even at 15. Miles from the city lights there was a smattering of stars that were vibrant, and they lit the darkness. I could see each prick in the blanket of deep space as a possibility for life, with a distance that was deceptively close to us.

And even last winter I could see life at a distance, but this time it was tangible and scary. Distance, like time, makes it so easy to romanticize a person, and distance make it so easy to love someone as well. Some night in February I was walking out into the night, ready to drive away on the miles of yellow and black, when I looked up. The stars were white light, monumentally large like the stadium lights I played baseball under when I was 10. I was cast out into the distance that I shared with her, and the heat like that I felt as a child on the in the school playground began sliding up my throat. Disregarding inhibitions, I let go dissolved into solid black space and I felt a torrent of fear and awareness flow into my cheeks. That was fear that I shared with Audrey, and with my brother, because I wanted them close to me but the odds which had wrought me were the same that kept all of us apart.