Kith & Kin

My younger brother,* Eric, has always had a fascination with audio and video technology. I remember, when he was an RTV major in college, I played piano for a brief radio program he had put together for a class project. It had to contain certain elements, one of which was a musical number. He knew a college guy who played the accordion, and the guy agreed to play for the program. Eric made sure we all knew that this was to be done like live radio, so timings had to be perfect. And we would do it only once while his teacher, in the booth with him, looked on severely—just to screw the stress up one more little notch. (Come to think of it, most teachers looked severe back in the 1980s.) Then Eric gave us directions, and his speech went something like this: One of the first things to ensure a good performance is strict attention to the director. I’ll keep my directions simple…. If I make a slashing motion across my throat, it means “cut the scene short.” If I make a revolving motion wi...

Baby Keith. Mom ’ s idea of putting the baby ’ s age right in the photo was a stroke of genius. My mother often told me the story of the day she and Dad brought Keith home from the hospital. They laid him on the couch, and I, two-and-a-half years old, looked at him and said, “Where’s his mommy?” At some point thereafter I comprehended the fact that my mommy and daddy were also Keith’s mommy and daddy, and that meant we were brothers. When we were still quite young, Keith and I had our own TV program. It was broadcast every evening immediately after supper. The two of us would go into the living room, stand in front of a large mirror, and put on a comedy show. Its high-brow humor consisted mostly of two little boys dancing around and acting silly, the larger one repeatedly hitting the smaller one on the head and pushing him off camera because he had made a comment that was, in the estimation of the larger one, stupid—while the smaller one gamely played along, always smiling, willingly...

On Saturdays male college students left campus in abundance. Some went to the mall. Some went home. And some of us who needed cash went to work for the good folks in the local community. It was on one such Saturday that I found myself at Mrs. White’s, along with a fellow college student named Phil. We rode there in Phil’s rattle-trap car, parked, got out, slammed the doors, and walked to the front door of a rambling white house with dark blue shutters. Wisteria grew profusely on a trellis to the left of the door, draping it in purple, and a hulking magnolia tree grew on the right, fully in bloom and fragrant. Phil knocked, and when the door opened, a tiny former Southern Belle with completely white hair welcomed us. It was Mrs. White. She must have at least been in her seventies, and you could tell she had always been happy and honest of soul, two traits that had given her a grandmotherly glow from within. We stepped just inside the door, and she introduced us to her son, Plato (yes, “...

  AI art by Copilot This is the end of the story. Mom and Dad came in the door, and Keith and I ran to Mom and hugged her. She was finally home from the hospital, where she’d been for a long time because there was something wrong with her heart. Suddenly we were all three crying—I’d never been so happy that I cried before. Keith and I pointed at each other and laughed and cried at the same time and hugged Mom for a long time. And this is the rest of the story. It was an afternoon in 1967. I was at my pastor’s house, and his wife, Mrs. Wilkin, was babysitting me. Every day for a few days—a week or more?—I was to walk up the village’s north hill to her house after morning kindergarten to stay with her . . .  because my mom was in the hospital. Mrs. Wilkin was a nice lady. I remember her as being tall (but all adults were tall), not heavy, and with dark hair. I remember learning to play pick-up sticks while I was with her, and I remember her giving me my first paying job....

Some memories stay fresh in our minds because they are so special or so amazing or so shattering that we play them over and over throughout our lives. Some memories, though, are hidden in the haze of our history and then surprise us by appearing when a random event triggers them. For instance, a couple of days ago I saw a bicycle and one of those hidden memories jumped out suddenly. I stopped walking for a second and carefully turned it over in my mind. Yes, I remember now—it really happened that way. I had completely forgotten. . . . The Bike I had picked out the coolest bike I’d ever seen from the all the bikes available in the bike store in little old downtown Fredericksburg. This was the era of Footsies , hula-hoops , Jarts , bell bottoms—and banana bikes. AI generated by Copilot Banana bikes had a distinctively elongated seat. They were usually bright in color, with high handlebars decorated with tassels that flapped in the wind. At some point I put plastic clickers...