Cabin_ Two Brothers, a Dream, and Five Acres in Maine - Lou Ureneck [74]
I don’t know why, but Paul and I didn’t talk about the trouble at home when we were growing up. Maybe it was too big a subject for us, or we lacked the words and experience to put what was happening around us into language. We both knew that it was not good, though I suspect we also thought that most people lived this way. Paul seemed less affected by the tumult than I—at least until John left for good, and then it hit him harder. It wasn’t until much later, around the time that I separated from my wife and passed through a kind of nervous breakdown, that we began to talk openly about our childhood and what we had made of it. It was a conversation that grew more sustained after our mother died. We both realized, I think, that we had bags to unpack. As we talked, I discovered that we had to some extent experienced different childhoods. Paul had not felt it as a time of anxiety or worry, as I had, nor did he see our mother’s life as tragic, as I had viewed it. My guess is that he was closer to the view that she would have expressed herself, a view that would have been shaped by her pride and unwillingness to give in to a sad representation of her life.
To some extent, Paul, I think, shared our mother’s view of me as vulnerable. At the same time, I was his older brother, and older brothers almost always come with admiration and standing. I had not been without achievement in the classroom, or courage in the schoolyard. I was not a coward among other boys. Paul looked up to me and was loyal to me in a way that went beyond friendship. These were thick and complicated family ties, and when we became adults the ligaments of mutual support were firmly in place.
We had spent a lot of time together when we built the first house, and we had talked more than we ever had before in our lives. The reliance that I set down on him in the course of that project—he had become the better builder by then—was new to our relationship. Before, I had been the leader, the smart one and the know-it-all. Building the house brought with it challenges that I could not solve without Paul’s help, both problem-solving tasks and physical tasks. The shift evened things out between us, and the relationship grew stronger as a result.
Paul’s constancy had offered me firm ground through my divorce. He never tired of my taking him through an analysis of the situation that had developed between my wife and me, and he always ended these sessions with the same advice: “Stop beating yourself up.” I had also been candid with him about my state of mind when I was first planning the cabin. I told him about the depression that was falling over me, and the visitations of panic and loneliness. “That’s not good,” he said, and after that he checked on me regularly with phone calls and included me in events at his home with the kids—birthdays, graduations. He had his children call me for advice on their school papers. It all helped.
Now I wanted to help him if he needed it, though it was not clear whether he did or not. He seemed more relaxed on some days as we worked, but I sensed that he was quietly sorting through a difficult decision.
“If you’re needing some money,” I told him, “I can help.” It was a shot in the dark.
“No,” he answered. “I’m fine with money, but thanks.”
As we worked on the cabin, I asked him about his job, which he said was going okay, and made small talk about life in general. He said everything was mostly okay but that he was feeling a need to make a change—he wasn’t sure what it should be, but there were days when he thought what he really wanted to do was take a year away from everything, get on his bike and drive around the country. “See what’s out there,” he said. “You know, this life, it isn’t a dress rehearsal.”
These conversations occurred intermittently as we worked and were interrupted by the need to call out measurements, ask for tools, even make trips to the hardware store, but they unfolded with a steady unity through the day, and sometimes over several days. More than once I heard him use the phrase “not a dress rehearsal.