A little whisper in the dark

He ain't heavy, he's ......

......my brother was holding my chin together - I had just flipped myself over the handlebars of the bike, managing to land chin first, before using the rest of my body to shed whatever forward velocity I had.

And so my chin bore the brunt of the impact, and ripped a macabre second "mouth". I don't remember much of the accident, just the moment of impact, and then me hitting the ground. My first reaction was to hope that no one noticed me falling off (almost everyone did, since I was near the front of the group of riders) and to pick up the bike and keep riding.

Then someone saw the stream of blood dripping off my chin, and stopped me......

As the younger brother I've always picked up on my brother's activities - building plastic models, mountain biking, and basketball. Its something to look up to, and aim for. What better than to out-do your big brother, right? And its always been a struggle to be gain credibility in his eyes, I wonder why, it really wasn't necessary, yet perhaps that's why I got into those activities: to outdo my brother.

But he's always excelled in hand-eye coordination stuff, whereas I'm better with technical stuff. So perhaps it became a role reversal, when I took up photography, and he followed not long after. By this time, we're probably a bit too old for competition, yet I did feel a certain pride that he'd ask me for help in stuff photography related.

And more so, when he came over to Brisbane last year, played some casual basketball with me, and commented that I'm playing a lot better than in the past.

We've been brothers for 20-some years, and we're old enough now that 3 years age differnce is hardly a poofteenth of difference anymore. We're old farts, sure, we can still play on any given day like we were 18, just don't expect us to jump out of bed the next morning ready to go another 3 hours of basketball.

He'd hit a rough patch recently, and I've had to try to bring him out of it. I'm still trying. After all, he was there holding my chin together, while I was half conscious, lying somewhere in the middle of nowhere, my blood on his hands. He even paid for the 5 stitches the doctor had to put on my chin in order to close the wound up.

We have quarreled and fought in the past, and we still do have arguments. But at the end of the day, he ain't heavy, he's my brother.

posted by Chung Leong @ 12:50 AM