Chord of Kin

It has puzzled me over the years how in my mind sounds become associated with or convey feelings often more readily than the images they accompany. Maybe my perception formulates concepts differently than most, maybe I have better audition; possibly my visual attention is deficient. Regardless, my memory wades in whispers and whines, in crashes and cries; I reminisce in not sights but sounds of my past.

A few verses of the songs in my mind are the types that make my face wrinkle like fingers that have been in a pool just too long. Sounds that I felt as much as heard. Sounds that have evoked pity, oohs and aahs, and far too often muffled laughter. An anecdote that still brings my sparse blond hairs to attention was orchestrated by my younger brother Alik. On one cold November morning I was provided with a sound association that will be with me until I have reached my final stanza.

It seems feeding time was the most Darwinian of struggles in our home, and I, being the oldest, was usually the fittest. In a paired arrangement my brothers and I would feed facing each other almost nose to nose, battling for every precious inch of bar top real-estate. Hunched over our guarded bowls of “O’s” like an impassioned quartet we ate alone yet together. My siblings, Leif, Alik, and Olin took there positions at the bar in a fairly arbitrary fashion, but I had “my spot”. The inside coroner nearest the front door was where I sat, and I ate, this was known. On one particular morning though Alik had decided to challenge my right as eldest son.

Six years my younger and barely two thirds my size, Alik was the red headed cymbalist of the family. Easy to erupt, resilient to punishment, and possessing of a will beyond an eight year old, instigating him was akin too tuning a guitar up to open G. As I awoke that morning and stumbled from my room, it was clear the “Rooster”, as we called him, was perched on my stool. This incited no emotion in me, and I felt it of no immediate consequence. As the older brother I simply sauntered up to him and flung him from my stool, spoon still in mouth. A trail of milk and saliva followed him in a long arc to the ground, and I assumed my spot. It was early and I had to catch the bus soon; I had little time for his antics. Expressionless I moved aside his half eaten bowl of Crispies, cleared some sleepy from my eyes, and lazily sorted through the cereals already pulled and arranged on the bar for our choosing. I failed to notice Alik, after clawing a few feet across the high gloss herringbone floor, had risen silently and make his way to the front of me, toward the small office area just outside our kitchen.

As I sat there, working on my morning meal, I distinctly recall naively watching Alik in the doorway bridging the office and kitchen. It is vivid to this day how he clamored through the cup of writing utensils that sat on the secretary just around the corner, just out of my line of sight. I remember the whine of the electric pencil sharpener as i watched Alik, still in the doorway, look at me, then his progress with a hand picked number two pencil, then back at me. After grinding off about an inch off his baton, with the same dispassionate expression I had donned earlier, he made his way back to me.

I found an article recently that made a compelling parallel of the properties of the epidermis, or skin, and the head of a drum. Apparently both can withstand a staggering amount of pressure, pounding, and abuse when spread across a reasonable surface area. As with a drum though, our skin is under constant tension so when sufficient pressure is applied over a small enough plane, the surface is broken and the released energy causes a disproportionate gape to open. Now in certain instances when the skin is punctured with aggressive force with a pointed stake or rod, the cleaving of the surface is accompanied by an uncanny pop that is without peer. Not quite a crack like that of leather on leather, not near the resonance of a burst balloon, more on par with the subtle yet significant bark of a kernel of corn erupting under heat and pressure. My brother played that note for me that morning with the rigid tip of his rebuke. After marveling for a moment at the stained pencil Alik had left protruding eloquently from my bare shoulder, I noticed the slight plume of skin much like warm popcorn had erupted around the wound where 3/4 inch of rosewood was now buried. I line of dark blood marched its way down my arm as I cried such a tremmorous shrill that all that was heard was a gasp of breath.

The moments following the crescendo trail off as abruptly as the end of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5. The sentinel of the house, my mother, miraculously appeared as if out of no where to tend to my wound. The scar has diminished over the years, now only a small grey dimple on my left arm, a silent reminder of the consonance that too often reverberates from love and hate. All my brothers are my best friends today, but in some ways Alik is distinct. He provided me an association that cold November morning, an association that no subtle Stradivarius could string, no symphony could match, a chord that rings, “we are brothers” every time it plays in my mind, an chord of kin.