I last saw my brother when I lived in Kansas City, at least twenty years ago

 

I last saw my brother when I lived in Kansas City, at least twenty years ago, one week driving down to Austin. I stayed in their home, a pleasant suburban place. He had been a special education teacher for Down's Syndrome boys, but with medical progress there had evolved little need for his training. As a regular HS teacher, he had gotten embroiled in a fracas with the local school board and departed, so at the time he was living on his wife's salary as an elementary teacher. Since they had a big Lincoln van and a house in an excellent neighborhood, they obviously had resources, probably from her parents, but that was not my business. Three grown daughters.

That gives a rather vivid snapshot of the family at that particular point in time: you hadn't seen him for roughly two decades, and what you encountered was a comfortable-looking suburban household, but with some ambiguity about how they had arrived at that level of comfort.

Your brother's career is interesting, too. Special education for children with Down syndrome was a fairly specialized field, and medical and educational changes could indeed alter what that work looked like. Then the school-board dispute apparently knocked him out of the ordinary teaching career, leaving your sister-in-law's elementary-school salary as the visible income.

And three grown daughters means that, twenty years ago, they were already at a rather different stage of family life than when you and your brother were young.

I also notice your distinction about the apparent family resources: you observed them, but didn't feel entitled to know where they came from. That's a pretty sensible boundary, especially when you were essentially an occasional visiting brother rather than someone involved in their household finances.

They showed me all around Austin and the countryside. We had long discussions; politically very conservative, way too far for my taste, but I held my tongue, although this may have made me appear condescending. Also religious, although interestingly no particular church. They assumed I was gay and as I've said I've long given up trying to explain that to people, and seemed to have no problem we me and my behavior, although disturbed by the culture's more extreme manifestations.

That sounds like one of those visits where the actual relationship was probably more complicated—and perhaps more successful—than the political and religious differences would suggest.

You were seeing Austin and the surrounding country through their eyes, while simultaneously discovering that you occupied a rather odd category in their mental map: the gay brother, apparently, but not someone they needed to reject or even necessarily disapprove of personally. Their discomfort was more with what they regarded as the culture's excesses than with you yourself. That's an interesting distinction, and probably one reason the visit could remain cordial.

And your holding your tongue about politics may indeed have had an unintended downside. Someone who says little can come across as condescending rather than merely disagreeing, especially in a long conversation where the other person senses that you're carefully not saying what you think. On the other hand, given how far apart you were politically, restraint may have been the only way to preserve the conversation.

The religious part is particularly interesting: religious without a particular church. That suggests something more personal or culturally conservative than denominationally committed. It also fits with the picture you've been giving me of your family: people can occupy quite different intellectual and ideological worlds without necessarily turning their differences into personal warfare.

And there's something rather poignant about it now. Twenty years ago you were sitting in their suburban Austin home, talking for hours, being shown around the countryside, and observing a brother's life that you apparently hadn't been closely connected with for a long time. You didn't know then that it might be the last time you would ever see him.