And suddenly...

My brother became a college graduate today. My little brother. The same brother that danced in a baby blue tuxedo when he was five years old, imitating James Brown and Michael Jackson (Christy and I his back-up dancers, of course). The brother who played "cheese wars" in the backyard pool with me, even when the water felt like zero degrees. The brother who sang his heart out for my mother at Christmas (and burned her a CD of his original songs), while she listened with tears streaming down her cheeks.


I watched him rise on the bleachers, his once blond "bozo-winged" hair now a dark brown cluster of curls under his black cap, readying himself for the march down to the football field where he would receive a scarlet folder with a small slip of paper inside that signified the end of this chapter of adolescence; he could no longer blame my parents for things gone awry, or borrow money because his life was too consumed with studies to work. No more late nights morphing into early mornings at the studio, or emergency campus grocery drop-offs to replenish his bare pantry. As I came to, and focused once again on the ceremony, I realized that he was suddenly gone. The bleachers that once held my left-tasseled brother were empty, and I wondered when all of this happened. When did it all happen? When did my blue-suited, Michael Jackson singing five year-old brother become an award-winning, design-archived architect [to-be] ? With brief panic, I searched the sea of black for my brother---curls and converse shoes, I found him, a few steps away from receiving his diploma. I watched him shake hands with the dean, and switch his tassel from left to right. And suddenly, he didn't look so young to me anymore.