My Brother’s Sixteenth Birthday

September 7, 1973, was my brother’s sixteenth birthday, so yesterday he turned sixty-four. I left for my freshman year of college, three thousand miles away from home, about two weeks before my brother turned sixteen. But I bought him a birthday present before I departed—a key case, into which I attached my keys to the family cars.

In lieu of a birthday card, I wrote him a poem. The poem began something like:

Because I am going away so far,
I forfeit my right to the family car.
And so, my dear brother, I give you these—
To the family car, the family keys.

It went on from there.

On his sixteenth birthday, or within a few days thereafter, my brother took his driver’s license exam. He failed. I had passed the test on my first try, and we were fairly competitive about many things, so I knew this failure would make him feel bad.

Despite our competitiveness, he wrote me a letter shortly after the driver’s test to thank me for the key case. In his note, he made no bones about his failure. “I choked,” he wrote.

I think the reason he choked was that he had to drive my parents’ Capri, a manual transmission car, for his test. Parallel parking a stickshift requires coordination, dexterity, and familiarity with the gears. And he hadn’t driven the Capri that much.

I had been fortunate when I took my test in the summer of 1972. My parents still owned the Ford Falcon station wagon in which I had learned to drive. That wagon wasn’t zippy, but it was an easy car to drive. And to parallel park—it fit anywhere.

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That letter from my brother in late September 1973 wasn’t the last letter I received from him, but it might have been the last one in which I felt he was really communicating with me. Admitting to his big sister that he’d choked couldn’t have been easy, but he was honest.

Later letters he wrote when he was in college tended to be recitations of his classes and pending projects, without much personal commentary. Often, he didn’t bother with thank-you notes, despite the training he’d received from our mother.

And after college, he never wrote me. I last saw my brother in May or June 1978. The only letter I’ve had from him since then was a sympathy card in January 2015 after I wrote to inform him our father had died. I know his mail box number, but that’s the only way I can contact him.

I’ve often wondered what happened to our relationship, why he changed from a brother who could tell me about failing his driver’s test into someone so distant. It’s one of our family mysteries.

Do you have family members from whom you are estranged?