Chapter 2: Brothers
On magnolias and plum trees and brotherhood
Note: The following is Chapter 2 of a memoir I’m working on titled Old Growth. This is the second of three chapters I’m sharing with you. You can read Chapter 1—which used to be behind a paywall—at the link below.
Chapter 2: Brothers
1984
Grandpa Warren lost his brother, William, in the war, and Grandpa Lewie’s older brother, Vic, moved away to be an art professor in Wyoming and Dad has worked with his brother Bill since he was fifteen and both he and Mom have two brothers so brothers are a theme for us.
My brother arrived near the beginning of 1984 when I was three and a half. His name is Tyler.
I link him with a lot of trees, like the oaks at Pointed Rocks, and the Doug firs on Mt. Hood and Mt. Tabor, and the ancient limber pine whose age is unknown growing off the side of Cusick Mountain.
But there are two I especially link with Ty, and the first is the white and pink-flowered magnolia which reached out from the Igawa’s side yard toward us as we grew.
The tree had flowers with broad petals which fell to the driveway in spring and melted into the slickness of mango rinds on the asphalt. They were difficult to rake. In summer, the magnolia dropped tender cones, and shed glossy leaves in the fall, which curled and crunched as they dried out. If we wanted to hoop we’d have to clean all that deadfall up for consistent ball handling and footwork, though I got pretty good at dribbling around the fallen leaves.
Magnolias are an old lineage—biologists estimate they stretch back around 95 million years, even before bees. That’s why their flowers are so unique, with wide and thick tepals and a pistil/stamen combo designed to attract beetles for pollination instead. While magnolias grow most everywhere due to their hardiness and beauty, they are especially revered in East Asia and the American South, where the warm climate allowed landraces to grow evergreen. In both regions, magnolias symbolize regality and goodness.
Instead of those virtues, our magnolia overwatched a lot of hand-to-hand combat.
1989
My other brother tree is an Italian plum—Prunus domestica—one of which grew from and island in the middle of our backyard.
The island was a bricked-in garden surrounded by grass, with forests of ferns and foliage on the eastern side and craggy boulder cliffs around the bed of the pond, which was converted to a sandbox since Mom and Dad had two sons and planned for none of them to drown. So Dad drilled a hole in the foundation and filled the pond up with sand, but on the western edge of the island was a spigot, out of which water could flow down a stone-lined stream, roll under a wide flat boulder, then spill off a stone cliff to etch rivers in the sandbox. If the spigot ran long enough the hole at the bottom couldn’t keep up and the pond would come back for a few hours before eventually draining again.
The plum tree cast shade under which we spent summer days, sometimes even as a team, imagining action-packed worlds populated with Army Ants and Battlebeasts and Lego guys together.
The plum tree could be climbed, too, with five trunks fireworking from the pond’s edge. One warm and clear day my friend Matt was over and we pretended to be a squad of commandos, vastly outnumbered, and for a good half-hour we overacted our deaths, riddled with bullets and cannonballs until we were finally dead and sprawled out in the grass and we cracked open our eyes to find Tyler on a limb of the plum tree, hidden by leaves, completely unscathed.
“He’s invincible!” cried Matt.
I knew Tyler was not invincible because one time he slid eyebrow first into the fireplace. (We were playing baseball inside.) There was a lot of blood. And another time he crashed his bike and crumpled to the road, an egg rising on his forehead, murmuring nonsense. We were at the cabin, and Dad swooped Ty up and set him in the Suburban and hightailed to Portland Adventist while I felt afraid and channeled my fear into finding the rock I guessed Tyler’s front wheel turned on and hurling it as far as I could out into the forest.
I’m older than Tyler by three and a half years and needed all that time to stay ahead because Tyler is a fiery competitor. Like, he’s currently one of the world’s best trailrunners. That’s the guy I had chasing at my heels. And while my pro athlete dreams died with the onset of adolescence, I’m competitive in my own right, and our street had no other kids our age so we were usually pitted against each other, and many of those games ended in fights which pitched until one of us was hurt enough to retreat. (Though I’ll add the three and a half year difference meant I almost always pulled my punches.)
The Proverbs say steel sharpens steel as one friend sharpens another. So Ty and I sharpened each other, yet no matter how often we fought, he was still my ally when the dark moved in, and a fear of night would rise and I’d call out quietly from the top bunk:
“Ty?”
“Yeah?”
“Just wanted to know if you were awake.”
Then I could sleep.
1991
There were benefits to being three and a half years older, but the downside was Tyler and I only shared a school for a few years, so each of us had to navigate school mostly alone.
As I understood from sermons and Sunday school, we were dual citizens. On one hand, we were subjects of God’s Kingdom, which we remembered on Sundays under the stained glass at Mt. Tabor Presbyterian, or when we prayed before meals, or in the ways Mom and Dad sought to live like Jesus.
On the other hand, we were all born Oregonians. We drove up to the mountain and down to the Coast and over to the High Desert and Wallowas. We swam in community pools and searched through Multnomah County Library stacks all over the city. We rooted for the Blazers and Ducks and sometimes even the Beavers. We went to public school. Mom and Dad would not hide us from the world, because they saw the world we lived in was rich in beauty and creations worthy of our curiosity and care.
To be born in such a wonderland, such abundance of quality craft and natural beauty, is still a blessing I can barely believe. Every aspect of being Oregonian drew Tyler and I in: the stories and songs; the fresh food and drink; the forests and gorges and deserts and rivers; the mountains; the great blue ocean; the streets and freeways; the animals and birds and abundant life all around; the way Oregonians are polite and helpful and strong. The way we descend from pioneers.
We hoped to echo Christ, sure, but we also wanted to echo Oregon. So I took to art and culture and Tyler took to running paths, first around Mt. Tabor and then through the mountains, paths which would lead him all around the world.
Still, as a citizen of two states, I saw how little one spoke of the other. Outside church or my home, God’s name was more likely uttered as an offhand curse than with holy reverence. The largest faith in all the world, the widest-read book by far, history’s most famous name…these were hardly ever brought up except maybe on posterboards around Pioneer Courthouse Square.
Yet I didn’t hide my faith and never felt reviled for voicing belief. For one, there were still plenty of Christians in Portland, and lots of folks from families of faith. We weren’t persecuted, per se, just quietly tolerated. God was fine to discuss at church on Sundays, but there was some barrier to bringing Him up elsewhere. This was more puzzling to me than painful since I knew by heart the Oregonian bent toward curiosity and hospitality to outsiders.
Even in the dissonance, I couldn’t shed my nations any easier than my own body. I am a Portlander. I am an American. And, partly as Americans and partly as Greens, Dad taught us to be brave in our convictions. I was comfortable with that, and when I spoke up in school, I felt recognized, if not quite fully heard.
But my citizenship in God’s Kingdom was a green and growing force within me, a grand story and way of being which I wrestled with every day. Precisely because of their rarity, finding other students or teachers or neighbors who also knew Jesus felt like striking gold.
I had friends who went to church on Easter, or who admitted there may be a God, or who didn’t consider such things. My comrades in middle school had other passions, like the Blazers and the X-Men and Weird Al and Predator.
With Tyler four grades behind, I walked alone, hoping for friends who could understand this Christian/Portlander duality. Not until the last years of high school did I find friends my age with a drive to live fully in both worlds.
A perfect Italian plum is dusty blue on the tree, and polishes to a violet sheen with a dishrag or the front of a t-shirt. The flesh is crunchy, a bit dry with a mild sweetness and undertones of citrus. I like them best midway through the season, when they are still tart, though I can only eat a few or my guts will turn over. In late summer the plums higher up the tree in our yard would fall and we had to gather and flip them into buckets because the rotting fruit drew yellow jackets.
2003
In early June the backyard grass is still deep green and soft enough to dive on.
Steve and I clatter shots at each other over the net of a ping-pong table, which Steve found a few blocks over with a FREE sign taped to the side. He and Andrew procured some beers back at the house and headed over to roll the table into our backyard, where we set our newfound treasure in the shade of another Italian plum tree. this one growing from the middle of the lawn behind Liberty House.
The summer is fresh but unseasonably hot. I tell John about the misters they had down in Arizona, how the spray of water forms a cooling curtain, so we head to the Jantzen Beach Home Depot to pick up a mister which we set on the back porch. We name the mister Mr. Mister. There are cold Coronas and Mirror Ponds and Newcastles in the fridge, and sliced limes on a cutting board on the counter and packs of American Spirits. John is on the porch, sipping a Corona, and bratwursts sizzle on the grill. We listen to Steve’s iPad plugged into stereo speakers. We listen to I Am the Fun Blame Monster and Living with Ghosts and Magnolia Electric Co. and Soul Journey.
John bought Liberty House that winter, and the four of us moved in and covered a quarter of the mortgage in rent. John and I met six years before at a youth group excursion. I was new to the group, which met at a church in Sunnyside. My own church was fading along with all the other mainline congregations while the Evangelical movement grew. The new church felt more modern and had a full roster of friendly blondes, so I gratefully accepted an invitation to a Wild Waves trip, and John was the first person I met, sitting on the middle row of the church van, with an outstretched hand and a warm smile.
“Hi, I’m John.”
I sat next to him and for a couple hours we connected over being Eastsiders and John went to Benson and I went to Franklin and we knew some folks in common and he pointed out to me how the girls in the van had a habit of talking—all five of them at once—and then they’d pause every so often to nod and agree with each other. At Wild Waves we slid down the slides and ate nachos and flirted with the girls and over the next few hours became friends.
John was soon my good friend, and we bonded over decades: flicking lit Swisher Sweets through the fog from the top of Rocky Butte so the sparks shatter on the road and we cool the smoke on our tongues with peppermint Slurpees; we order happy hour schnitzels at Gustav’s; we nod hello after dropping our girlfriends at Multnomah Bible College right before curfew; we nightswim at Bull Run. Later we are together for moves through California and Nevada; Championship losses in Arizona and Texas; journeys to Malibu and Santa Fe; weddings and fatherhood and deaths.
When I met him, John had a few other good friends, the closest of which were Steve and Dave. Dave was away in the Army and Steve was away at college in Texas when John brought me in.
The next summer Steve returned from Texas and we quickly got along. He had a dry wit and quiet generosity. He was thoughtful and a good listener. We saw the world in similar ways, each curious and quick to laugh at absurdity, each drawn to similar sounds and films and art. Steve was there in Malibu and Santa Fe, too; shot pool at Cue’s; brought day-old pastries home from Starbucks; saw Radiohead and Tom Petty with me in the Gorge; was more willing than John to play video games.
Our fourth roommate was Andrew, who we met about a year before when he began dating our friend Cami. Andrew moved down from Tacoma and was studying to be a real estate agent. He was warm and kind and laughed quickly and he fit easily with us and was well-matched to Cami, who had an oddball streak, and all five of us enjoyed being together on that back deck, grilling with beers or margaritas, laughing and talking about sports or theology or mechanical engineering or any other idea we felt worthy.
While Andrew and Cami had companionship, the rest of us longed for love of our own. We each had our own paths to search at work or school, or coffee shops, but the most likely place we’d find someone was our shared ground at Imago Dei.
Our congregation was only a couple years old by then but the pews filled out over two services at Old Laurelhurst. To be a new church in Portland then was exceedingly rare, but Imago Dei had a vibrance and aesthetic which called to many of us dissatisfied with the ubiquity of Evangelicalism. The music had a rootsy twang. Attendees skewed young and artistic and single. And every Sunday, Pastor Rick McKinley preached about Jesus.
There’s this story from The Odyssey.
Odysseus is on his way home from the Trojan War. He ports on the island of Aeaea, where he becomes enamored by the sorceress, Circe, and after overcoming her magic with Hermes’ help, Odysseus becomes Circe’s well-fed lover for a full year until his men remind him they aren’t sleeping with goddesses and would really prefer to get home.
Before he sets sail, Circe tells Odysseus how to navigate past the monsters which await, and the most memorable of those are the Sirens, who sing enchantments which lure sailors to their doom. Odysseus, who is full-driven in his quest for knowledge, seeks to hear the songs and survive.
So he comes up with a plan: stop up the crew’s ears with melted chunks of beeswax, then tie Odysseus to the mast. With their captain secure, the men row near the isle and the celestial music rises:
'Blest is the man ordain'd our voice to hear, The song instructs the soul, and charms the ear. Approach! thy soul shall into raptures rise! Approach! and learn new wisdom from the wise… Whate'er beneath the sun's bright journey lies. Oh stay, and learn new wisdom from the wise!'
The Siren’s sound drives Ulysses near mad with desire and he strains against his chains and nearly breaks free but the crew adds new bonds and rows hard along the sea and the song fades away and Ulysses is freed again.
This story rings in me because my ears are well-attuned to sirens, and I know with my brothers besides me—not just Andrew and John and Steve and Tyler, but all the others as well—I row harder and would’ve fallen further when I fell. This is part of what brothers are for.
I like the way you capitalize the divine pronouns. It may seem old-fashioned to some, but to me it feels like a small but constant sign of respect to our loving, just, and incomprehensible Creator. I do it too.
This is so good. I wish I would have know more about your writing during the short time I knew Ty while at the swoosh.