The Early Years Collection

last august i picked through photo albums and hard drives

to provide my brother’s wife a roadmap

of the hardening and softening of my brother’s face

and the guidestones of his smile throughout the years

i am the youngest of four sons

and in the early 90s when my eldest brother graced

our parents with his birth, my eyes lingered

on the youthful faces and joy in the eyes of my mother and father

something i remember only hazily

“i was 27 when that picture was taken” my mom says

“how old are you these days?”

i’ve never been more aware of my own age

i flip through the years long enough to catch

my second brother’s birth, his curly hair

growing in and the smile spreading across his face

and then my third brother is born

and i stop mistaking one for the other

and i find outings and visitations from great-aunts and grandparents

who now exist only in memory and in glossy print

i flag the vital memories for my brother’s wife and carry on

eventually i am born, the quartet is complete

i find again the photo of my brother whose first instinct seeing

baby me was to ask “can i hold him?”

it was this photo that i held up at his wedding, saying

“if he treats you with the same love instinctive to that ugly child

when he first met an ugly baby

then you are a massively lucky woman”

there is a photo in the wedding album of my brother when that line hit

he’s grinning

the archive ends abruptly soon after i was born

it’s hard, i imagine, to find the time to develop film

when you’ve got four little brats running around

oh well

it was never about me