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A tender, lengthy embrace. The two men must have been close to sixty. Gray receding hair, slender, both over six foot to be sure.
It was just outside security at the Hartford, Connecticut airport.
"You will always be my big bother," one said with an earnestness to the other. That's the only thing I heard. It wasn't said, though, with typical reverence, awe or deference that a younger might offer an older.
It seemed a reversal of roles, the younger comforting the older.
They were serious, almost melancholy in their exchange.
The older seemed troubled, unsteady. Staggered by a physical ailment or an emotional one. Which exactly I can't know. Either can be as debilitating as the other.
In the younger's embrace was pity, concern, almost protection.
In the older's was, I thought, a bit of resignation.
"You will always be my big brother," came back to me again.
I wandered my way through security. The sensation of that moment swathing me. I pondered it, my emotions contaminated by those words, mist making a fleeting appearance in my eyes.
I gathered my luggage on the other side of all the myriad of scanners and I looked back over my shoulder.
There was the younger brother. He had walked as far as he could. He stood at the barriers that separated the ticketed from the not.
He could go no further. But he kept his eye on the older. He peered at him through the commotion of security and finally caught his eyes once more.
He gave his older brother a hopeful, maybe a bit of a forced, thumbs up. I didn't see the older's response.
They went their ways.
And I thought about family. And I thought about affection. And I thought about protection. And I thought about security, the familial kind. And I thought about unending love no matter what.
Even when there's a reversal of roles.
I thought about the womb, the cocoon that family can be. Even, too, that the best of friends can be.
I thought about those who are with us no matter what. Those relationships that can withstand the very, very worst.
That no matter how far you go down into the valley, that person will go with you. That no matter how much you suffer they are there with a comforting embrace, an encouraging word, maybe even a forced thumbs up.
Lucky are we if we have such ones.
Good if we can be such a one to someone else.
Sometimes the big brother is the big brother. Sometimes there is a reversal of roles.
But in fortunate lives there is this love.
The real stuff tested by woe.
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