I wanted to reminisce. An orgy of nostalgia, a wave of fond compassion for the fascinating child I used to be and the heroic brother he used to be. No one is as good for talk of the old days as brothers, or, I suppose, sisters.

My brother, when he comes, brings a hammer and a couple of wrenches. He started that when I first moved back to Oregon. Checking up on me. Making sure. Of what? He goes around tightening the joints of pipes. He comes when my roof leaks at the peak, patches the holes and repaints the ceiling where it turns brown every winter from the seeping water. He fixed my locks, all of them. We don’t know each other. What we have each become is strange to the other. But our child selves are friends, and when we are together there is the awkward adulthood between us only for a first few moments before we are crowing or scowling over some long-ago escapade.

We sit gobbling tuna sandwiches and raisins, our heels kicked up on my garden wall with the plate between us. He’s been shoring up my chimney with cable and bolts. It seems natural to say, “If Ma saw you fooling around on the roof like that she’d have a fit.” And he, with only the picture and no interfering thought, grins and remembers the grape arbor where we used to hang upside down, giggling and whispering over and over, “If you break your neck Ma will kill you.” We’d go on giggling, gasping for air, for that was the ultimate joke, our mother’s method of dealing with her own concerns for our welfare. If we did something dangerous, we were switched till we wished we were dead, briefly. Although there was never a mark that lasted past dinnertime. He knew my mother, and the houses and toys and the fears and freckles and vicious subterfuge, and I knew his. And when we are together that old time is new and rich again.

But it’s only comfortable when there’s no one else around. Because it’s private. Because the things we can remember together nobody else could see, or could care about if they did.

I am getting old. I’ve longed for years to be old and now it’s coming to me. My knees and hips have stiffened, and they ache if I sit without moving too long. I get up and trot around the kitchen, run in place and feel a satisfying swag of my rear with every jounce.