I’d Rather Be The Jackson Five
On the bottom are Dave (left) and Tom. Kevin’s on top of Dave. Mick’s next to Kevin. And that’s me on top—for the moment.
Chapter 20
On the first day of kindergarten, my teacher, Mrs. Newkirk, walked around the classroom and gave each of us fresh-faced five-year-olds a sheet of paper with a mimeographed image of a storybook house—complete with swirly smoke coming out of the chimney—and the words “My Family” written across the top. The rest of the sheet was blank.
“Put this in your folder and take it home with you today,” she told us. “Your homework for tonight is to show me what your family looks like. You can draw them or you can even use real photographs if your mom and dad help you!”
I was so excited to have homework. My first homework! And I wasn’t about to ask for any help from anyone.
My finished product was made with cutout pictures showing my family. There was a mom, a dad, four big brothers, and me. It was a model family. Literally.
I had cut every picture out of the JCPenney catalog. The mom and dad were much younger than my actual parents. The dad had a full head of hair and the mom had on a spotlessly clean dress, gloves, and pearls. To make my twin brothers, I took two pictures of the same boy—one time wearing a raincoat and the other time wearing pajamas. I was sure it would pass for my twin brothers. For my other two brothers, I included a picture of two boys dressed in football jerseys and sporting big, friendly smiles. And then there was me, or at least the image of me—an extremely cute little boy wearing shorts and a collared shirt.
And that was my fantasy family.
Perhaps I should have been in therapy back then.
I went through most of my childhood feeling like my brothers didn’t like me. I felt it the most when my parents were gone on a Friday or a Saturday night, leaving me alone with my brothers. That was not a good thing. Not good at all.
Mick and Kevin (also known as the two football players in my family montage) were pros at playing with my head.
One particular Saturday night, our parents were away playing bridge with another couple, and Mick and Kevin were put in charge of a six-year-old me.
I don’t remember the specifics of the night. But I do remember fighting with them. Both of them. I remember arguing nonstop. I remember being outraged. And I remember taking a small ukulele my parents bought in Mexico and smashing it over Kevin’s head.
Then I remember running and hiding in a closet.
Which was followed by several minutes of silence.
Next, I remember hearing my eleven-year-old brother, Mick, screaming, “Oh my God! Oh my God! Someone help me! Oh my God! Someone call Mom and Dad! Oh my God!”
I ran out of the closet. My heart was pounding.
I found Mick. He was in the kitchen, standing over Kevin’s lifeless body slumped on the floor. Kevin’s head was covered in . . . blood!
“He’s dead!” Mick screamed. “He’s dead!”
And before I could break out in the tears that were building up inside of me, knowing I was going to be in big trouble with my parents for killing my brother, Kevin rose miraculously!
Suddenly, Mick pinned me from behind while Kevin beat the crap out of me.
His blood? Catsup.
His death? Faked.
His motivation? Obvious. I was the one who was going to be killed that night.
I gave my brothers a multitude of reasons not to like me as a little kid. I was, after all, a pain-in-the-neck most of the time.
I hated being the baby. I asked my mother one day if we might ever have another kid. It seemed like a reasonable request to me. I don’t remember her exact response, but I do remember my question really set her off and whatever she said ended with the words “Are you out of your mind?”
My role was carved in stone from the day I was born. Boy number five. The baby brother.
And that, much to my regret, was who I had to be.
Bringing my brothers—Tom, Dave, and Mick—into my cancer story was one of the hardest things I had to do. As a family, we had been down the cancer road three other times together. Two of those times had taken place in the previous six years. The wounds were too raw. There was also a part of me that felt as if I was letting them down. Cancer can make you think stupid sometimes.
As I prepared myself to call each of my three brothers, I relived the pain I had felt a few years earlier when my brother Mick called to tell me Kevin had brain cancer. I couldn’t bear to start my brothers on another emotional roller coaster.
My love for my brothers is a love reserved solely for them. Through the last twenty-some years of adulthood, we’ve had to adjust our relationships to fit into our grown-up lives. There was a point in time when we lived in five very distant states: California, New York, North Carolina, Kansas, and Nebraska. Our careers were demanding. Our own families consumed our time.
And while we always stayed in touch, our connections became more structured and formal. We’d focus on rendezvousing back in Nebraska. We’d visit each other on occasion. But we were always on a schedule. And we had little downtime.
Some people joke that as they get older, they only see their relatives at funerals. My brothers and I were getting into that groove at a very early age.
My cancer story, in the scheme of the Higley family, was the first one that didn’t come with an automatic death sentence. There was a small part of me that even felt like I had a purpose, a duty of sorts, in being the first one in our family to survive this. It was the hope of vindication perhaps.
Maybe I just wanted my brothers to be proud of me.
Every day of that summer I wrote in the notebook my friend Karen had given me.
But I rarely found myself writing about what was going on with my cancer storyline.
The stories that kept bubbling up to my head, through my heart, were stories from the past. Things I hadn’t thought about in years. And so many of them were about my brothers. The real stories of who they were and continued to be to me.
Sitting next to each other, in birth order, at our kitchen counter eating our morning bowls of cereal.
Building a human pyramid in our backyard. My dad always placing me on top.
Idolizing my brother Kevin as I sat on a stool in his darkroom. Watching him develop black-and-white photographs.
Counting free throw shots for Mick. Wishing I was him.
Waxing the car with the twins before they went to their one and only prom.
Flipping off Mick from afar and thinking I was pretty cool. And having him, several hours later, give me a much-needed lesson in respect.
I wrote about the endless collection of stories that shaped my life. I wrote about my family.
I had four amazing brothers growing up. And now I had three.
That summer, the three of them gave me something that could only come from them. It was the reminder of something I had forgotten I loved so much.
Being their little brother.