What I Learned From My Brothers Kevin Spaulding

Light brown autumn leaves blew swiftly across the cracked sidewalk that outlines my oldest brother Lance's house. I stood silently there and stared at him walking down the street, his two year old son Luke trotting at his side. The sun was orange and shined low in the egg white sky, casting their shadows - one tall and one tiny - before my eyes. One of those surreal lapses of time and existence had formed where I was gazing upon the world as though it were a series of snapshots shown in a slideshow and explained by the photographer who had taken them.

Lance - being fourteen years older than me - had helped me grow. He had been a father figure all my life and engraved in me so much that I know. Just the fact that he was now going to take his own son on a similar journey was enough to make me gulp from a sudden rush of sentimentality.

The snapshots then melted back to reality and the world moved fluidly as time reclaimed its role. I wanted to call to Lance, to talk to him. And so I ran. The only way he'd understand me would be to tap him on the shoulder and speak with my lips exposed to his eyes. It was an act that had become natural to me by now, and it didn't bother me at all. Having a hearing impaired brother meant...