DScottGRRL

The farther I get physically from my family, the stronger my need to be a part of it; the undeniable need to connect.

People talk about the happy quiet that can exist between two lovers, but this was too great; sitting between his sister and his brother, saying nothing, eating. Before the world existed, before it was populated, and before there were wars and colleges and movies and clothes and opinions and foreign travel—before all of these things there had been only one person, Zora, and only one place: a tent in the living room made from chairs and bed-sheets. After a few years, Levi arrived; space was made for him it was as if he had always been.

Looking at them both now, Jerome found himself in their finger joints and neat conch ears, in their long legs and wild curls. He heard himself in their partial lisps caused by puffy tongues vibrating against slighlty noticeable buckteeth. He did not consider if or how or why he loved them. They were just love: they were the first evidence he ever had of love, and they would be the last confirmation of love when everything else fell away.

~ Zadie Smith, On Beauty.

There’s something so delicious about re-reading one of your favourite books and finding new passages that excite you by their ability to get it so unbelievably right.

It’s summer. I do a lot of re-reading in the summer. In less than a week I’ll have some really heavy reading to contend with so I’m hanging on to these few precious moments of do-nothingness I have left (decadence!).

So… on siblings.

The instance of the above passage is when a sister and two brothers fortuitously bounce into each other at a bus-stop in Boston. Entirely unplanned and ridiculously serendipitous.

Once we grew up and moved out, my dad would always get a kick out of that the three of us being together, wherever we were, even if he and mums weren’t there. I didn’t get it then. I do now.

It’s funny, the less I see of them–and now that I’m in LA it’s considerably less–the more I’m amazed by the wall of love I run into whenever we’re together.

To paraphrase, I most definitely do not consider the if or how or why of loving my brothers. But it is absolute and unfailing and… so comforting. And now that they’re having kids, I can feel it in the wall of love that hits me (no words) to be in the presence of these newest blood members. A love like they were always there. I’m botching it up. She said it better:

They were just love: they were the first evidence he ever had of love, and they would be the last confirmation of love when everything else fell away.

How comforting not to need words (and the three of us all have a bit of the over-explainer in us), to know that words are superfluous to the flow of understanding that comes from a shared history.

I think I’m going to extend this to my cousins. By virtue of our age gaps, I spent as much time with my eleventy first cousins (four in particular) as I did with my brothers. We’re not as close as we used to be, which makes me kind of sad.

But it still hits me so profoundly to be with them, to know that in the deepest, most true sense that they understand it all, that they “get it.”

To feel the pull of blood.

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