February 26, 2024
Greetings from the tribe,
My brother has a cheap watch, nine dollars on Amazon. It’s a couple of years old. It lights up when you push a button so you can see the time even when it’s dark. That’s the feature he was searching for when he bought it. Lights up.
I was in California to see my brother and my sisters, a reunion of sorts, although not in any traditional sense. We like to scare the hell out of each other. Not in a creepy way, just add a little surprise here and there that elevates your heart rate to chaotic levels, mixed with the joyful adrenaline that comes when your brother climbs out of the trunk of a car. Surprise!
We were drinking beer in the kitchen when my brother said: “Did you hear that?” I didn’t, but I thought it was some kind of trick or a joke, because the other thing we like to do together is laugh. I figured this was going to be some kind of setup, where he mocks my retirement, or my short attention span, or some feminine trait that I have suppressed but now am expressing through my choice of shoes.
“Did you hear that?” he asked. I pretended that I might have, still wary, and he told me it was his watch. It beeps every hour, not a feature he sought out, in fact, the watch volunteered it without being asked. Just started doing it and it won’t stop.
We gathered our sisters and ate pizza and laughed, hiked and laughed, we went to the ocean and laughed, we had coffee and laughed. We laughed at old jokes and made new ones and then we laughed at how we laughed. Honestly, if you were watching us in a restaurant, you’d ask for a table farther away. And then we’d join you and ask you where you got your glasses or what the best part of your day was or if you were going to finish your fries.
I said: “I can fix that, let me have your watch.” My brother, whose name is Doug, but sometimes is called David because it’s easier to remember, said “Sure, knock yourself out.” I have owned many cheap digital watches, and a few expensive ones, and I am practically a black belt in fixing them. I fixed it and handed it back to him, with what I am sure was a smug look on my face. An hour later it beeped again. “Did you hear that?” he asked. Same smug look, I think.
My sisters went to get matching tattoos, also part of the surprise, and so we all went along so we could laugh some more. My sisters are named Dawn and Jennifer, which is what we call them almost all the time, although they are slowly looking more and more alike, so I predict that will change.
Jennifer, whom our Dad sometimes called Jenny Penny, was watching Dawn get her tattoo, sitting next to her and encouraging her, and came over to say: “When she first started, she looked just like Mom. But then she looked just like Leslie.” She laughed. The tattoos were to commemorate our sister Leslie who watches us from the other side of all this laughter and surprise. “It’s like she is right here with us,” she said. Yes, that was true.
We sat around a picnic table and ate pizza with Lee, who is still married to Douglas despite predictions otherwise, and Bill, who is called Sweet Bill because Jennifer loves him and so we don’t confuse him with the other Bill we love. And talked about what it was like growing up, swapping stories about the food we ate and going to church, or not, where we had fun, where we felt heartbreak. Some stories were new, some recycled, some were true, others were probably lies. All were beautiful. I feel every one in me, feel every laugh in me.
My brother Doug, who I sometimes call Hume, said that every night he has to put the watch in the garage. I was in the middle of drinking a glass of water, which we use to space out the intake of coffee and beer, and had to spit it in the sink I was laughing so hard. He said that if he forgets to put the watch in the garage it wakes him up and he has to wrap it in a towel and shove it in a drawer or something.
Hume is my brother’s middle name and our Dad’s name. For a few years, he would write “Hume rules” in minor graffiti around the place where we worked together, wall tattoos that are still present in those spaces, even though no one who might see them today knows who that is. We do.
Later Douglas asked me, “Did you hear that?” when the watch beeped. Dawn was there and got the watch story and she said, “Do you want me to fix that for you?” This time I was watching Doug’s face when he said “Sure, knock yourself out.” Dawn is one of my heroes, for many reasons, including the time she taught me to be a parent and another time how to run an ultramarathon, startlingly similar activities. Dawn is also an expert on digital watches.
There’s a brewery near me called Tenacity, and they have a wall where you can write messages with a felt pen. So I write “Hume rules” and send Doug a picture of it once in a while. I sent him a little sticker from Tenacity, a reminder of when we had a couple of beers there. He never acknowledged getting the sticker, which was inside of a birthday card I sent deliberately late. It is his way of saying thanks for being so thoughtful.
Dawn, who does not like the sound of pickleball, fixed the watch. The watch beeped an hour later. We countered by laughing so loud that we wouldn’t hear it. We would have drowned out a pickleball game.
We hiked up Iron Mountain on a beautiful morning, clear skies, hawks circling, and wisps of cotton clouds in the crevices below us. We talked all the way up, laughing in between gasps for air in the steep places. When we got to the top Douglas said something about the heavy iron telescope that was anchored there. “Wow, look at that, somebody put stickers all over the telescope.” A kind of graffiti.
I looked and there among the dozens of colorful labels I spotted the Tenacity sticker I’d sent him. Surprise. He didn’t acknowledge it. His way of saying thanks for being so thoughtful. Doug hikes this mountain a couple of times a week, we both know he sees that little reminder.
My brother bought the cheap Amazon watch before we climbed Mt. Whitney a couple years ago, with his daughter Cali. It lights up in the dark when you push a button, which turned out to be a good feature. I know that Douglas could get another watch that doesn’t require taking it into the garage each night to avoid being reminded of the passing of every 60 minutes. But he keeps it because it reminds him of something else, an experience that is etched in all of us.
If you were to meet us you would like us, I promise, although reading back through this I hesitated to write that. In time you would see these little icons we share, the names and the tattoos and watches and memories and stickers and traditions and surprises and the laughing. Every year we add to them, and each becomes the gossamer threads of life that bind us together. These precious things we trade back and forth to say what matters more than anything.
I love you.
Hope this finds you laughing,
David
Copyright © 2024 David Smith
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