My brother left for Canada today. He really left. He said he would do it and then he did. I feel like the whole thing was decided overnight. I’ve been in Baguio and Novaliches for the past two weeks and I wasn’t really around for any of it except for today: the last day. The fact that I even went on those trips might hint to you that he and I weren’t at all close. I love him as much as one could love a brother who he doesn’t drink with, he doesn’t go to for help or even talk to outside of calling through the bathroom door asking, “are you done yet?” I originally wrote “loved” in that last sentence and went back and erased the “ed” I guess that’s telling as well. He’s gone. Last night he was driving me home from dinner with our grandparents (my parents had brought a separate car because they’d planned to go to Heckle and Jeckle again). It turned out we had a lot more in common than I thought. He wanted to stay in the Philippines but his major concern was financial, he wanted to live in different places all over the world and other more personal things as well. Today, I wasn’t even sure I was going to the airport to say goodbye to him (I hadn’t really gotten a decent night’s sleep since Tuesday) but I’m glad I did. Despite the insightful evening and all 30 or so minutes of what was quite possibly the longest conversation I’ve had with him since we were boys, I still caught myself exasperated at some of the things that went on in the car ride to NAIA. He hadn’t distributed his cash into different places which was traveling 101 for me, when I told him that liquids weren’t allowed in his hand carry, I would have expected him to move his facial products into his suitcase even if my mom said that the limit was 100ml but she wasn’t sure if it was in total or per container, but he didn’t, little thing like that that made it hard for us to share much more than a bathroom. Some part of me was even annoyed that I couldn’t talk about the writing workshop that I had just come back from and was still excited about because I didn’t want to make everything about me. And so, we unloaded his luggage, he hugged my dad and then my mom and kind of awkwardly put his arm around my shoulder. He let go and looked at us and his face became pink, and scrunched up. His shoulders began to jerk and not so suddenly, we were brothers and we cried. My parents were surprisingly calm. My dad told him to think of it as a vacation, if he didn’t like it, he could always come back. On the ride home, I was quiet.
