Orchard House: How a Neglected Garden Taught One Family to Grow by Tara Austen Weaver Page A
Authors: Tara Austen Weaver
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to me, and I let him, temporarily suspending the rules of engagement and allowing him room on my side of the car.
“Make your hands like Mommy,” he said, and I gently stroked his hair until he fell asleep. I sat as still as I could as my mother drove late into the night and my brother slept, his golden head in my lap, and together we crossed the desert plains of Nevada and climbed high into the dark mountains, up the spine of a continent and down the other side.
—
It was my brother who first suggested I move to Seattle. I was still living in Japan at the time, but back for a visit. I had one year left on my contract, and I was thinking about my options. Thatsummer I visited friends in Colorado and Washington, D.C., as well as San Francisco. Everywhere I went I wondered: Could this be my next home?
The one place I never considered was Seattle. I stopped there only to visit my brother—and because it was partway between my mother’s house near San Francisco and the island in Canada where she was teaching for the summer.
We hadn’t been close growing up. The teen years in particular had been a catfight. Though perhaps it was a catfight all along. I have a scar on my forehead from a spoon my brother threw at me in a fit of childhood anger. It split the skin, and when our mother heard the screams and came running, she found blood coursing down my face. I was eight, he was six; we had only been trying to play cards.
In the year or two before I left Japan, however, there had been a softening, perhaps a warming. My friend Paul had a little to do with it. We were both working in Japan, and when I heard about the great time he’d had when his sister visited him, I blurted out, almost without thinking, “I want my brother to come visit me.”
“Invite him,” Paul said. And he told me exactly what to say when I called my brother, out of the blue, to ask him to visit me on the other side of the world.
“I’m gonna make you an offer you can’t refuse.”
My brother did come—our mother quickly offering to pay for his ticket. That trip felt like the beginning of our adult relationship, no longer competing for scarce resources. He met my friends, won over local students (“Leo! Leo!” they cried, thinking he looked like Leonardo DiCaprio). He and Paul both teased me, each of them knowing all too well what buttons to press. Suddenly it felt like I had two brothers.
Still, when he suggested I consider Seattle on my list of possibilities, it surprised me. I thought the reason he had gone off to college and never come home was a desire for distance fromfamily. I thought we were on the same page about that. I had moved to Europe and then to Asia. Distance was a game I was good at.
“Would you
want
me here?”
“I don’t think we’d hang out all the time,” he said, a bit defensively. “We’d have our own friends—but I think you’d like it here.”
—
In high school my brother had surpassed me. Somehow this small child I used to take care of had picked up a social rhythm I couldn’t quite grasp. He was funny, popular, a quick wit with sly humor. I was always a beat or two off, standing alone in the cold.
He could have brought me into this circle, but he didn’t. He made fun of me; he shut me out. Perhaps he learned it from me. Hadn’t I been first to sell him out?
“Nobody likes you,” my brother taunted. It wasn’t true, but part of me, the most scared and tender part, feared that it was. That my brother could somehow see through me in a way other people couldn’t. That he knew what I really was: a fraud, a failure, destined to be a social outcast. It was years before I realized he wasn’t right.
But sometimes my brother surprised me. A few years after he moved to Seattle, I stayed with him on my way down from Canada. I would be arriving late and leaving early and couldn’t even tell him for sure when I would show up—ferry lines and border crossings take time. When I arrived, late and tired,
“Make your hands like Mommy,” he said, and I gently stroked his hair until he fell asleep. I sat as still as I could as my mother drove late into the night and my brother slept, his golden head in my lap, and together we crossed the desert plains of Nevada and climbed high into the dark mountains, up the spine of a continent and down the other side.
—
It was my brother who first suggested I move to Seattle. I was still living in Japan at the time, but back for a visit. I had one year left on my contract, and I was thinking about my options. Thatsummer I visited friends in Colorado and Washington, D.C., as well as San Francisco. Everywhere I went I wondered: Could this be my next home?
The one place I never considered was Seattle. I stopped there only to visit my brother—and because it was partway between my mother’s house near San Francisco and the island in Canada where she was teaching for the summer.
We hadn’t been close growing up. The teen years in particular had been a catfight. Though perhaps it was a catfight all along. I have a scar on my forehead from a spoon my brother threw at me in a fit of childhood anger. It split the skin, and when our mother heard the screams and came running, she found blood coursing down my face. I was eight, he was six; we had only been trying to play cards.
In the year or two before I left Japan, however, there had been a softening, perhaps a warming. My friend Paul had a little to do with it. We were both working in Japan, and when I heard about the great time he’d had when his sister visited him, I blurted out, almost without thinking, “I want my brother to come visit me.”
“Invite him,” Paul said. And he told me exactly what to say when I called my brother, out of the blue, to ask him to visit me on the other side of the world.
“I’m gonna make you an offer you can’t refuse.”
My brother did come—our mother quickly offering to pay for his ticket. That trip felt like the beginning of our adult relationship, no longer competing for scarce resources. He met my friends, won over local students (“Leo! Leo!” they cried, thinking he looked like Leonardo DiCaprio). He and Paul both teased me, each of them knowing all too well what buttons to press. Suddenly it felt like I had two brothers.
Still, when he suggested I consider Seattle on my list of possibilities, it surprised me. I thought the reason he had gone off to college and never come home was a desire for distance fromfamily. I thought we were on the same page about that. I had moved to Europe and then to Asia. Distance was a game I was good at.
“Would you
want
me here?”
“I don’t think we’d hang out all the time,” he said, a bit defensively. “We’d have our own friends—but I think you’d like it here.”
—
In high school my brother had surpassed me. Somehow this small child I used to take care of had picked up a social rhythm I couldn’t quite grasp. He was funny, popular, a quick wit with sly humor. I was always a beat or two off, standing alone in the cold.
He could have brought me into this circle, but he didn’t. He made fun of me; he shut me out. Perhaps he learned it from me. Hadn’t I been first to sell him out?
“Nobody likes you,” my brother taunted. It wasn’t true, but part of me, the most scared and tender part, feared that it was. That my brother could somehow see through me in a way other people couldn’t. That he knew what I really was: a fraud, a failure, destined to be a social outcast. It was years before I realized he wasn’t right.
But sometimes my brother surprised me. A few years after he moved to Seattle, I stayed with him on my way down from Canada. I would be arriving late and leaving early and couldn’t even tell him for sure when I would show up—ferry lines and border crossings take time. When I arrived, late and tired,
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