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Please Let Me Tell You about My Brother Andrew

By Elizabeth Anne Van Cleve (19 August 2013-Prince Edward Island, Canada)

It was shortly after I began living solely with my mother and grandmother in San Francisco, when I was three years old, that I first met my new stepbrother Andy.  He was the middle one of three boys that my father would later adopt after taking a new wife.  Dad, his new wife Brunla, and her three sons lived in Alameda near the beach.  Andy was nine years older than I was, athletic, and very tall; so of course, I thought he, like his even taller brothers, must be a grown up.  I was surprised to hear that this wasn’t so.

Andy was red haired, freckled, with pale white skin, wore thick black framed glasses, the type of plaid shirt that had tiny buttons which held down its collar, and black high top sneakers when he wasn’t going barefoot.  Andy talked a lot, had a rather loud voice when he shared enthusiastically the many things going on in his life or the latest joke that he’d heard.  I marveled at the way that he would remember the things I’d shared with him months earlier, how he always followed through with anything that he’d promised me, and how eager he was willing to attempt so many things with his brothers, like surfing, skateboarding, standing on his head, walking on his hands, and doing tricks on his bike.  My father made silent movies of him and his brothers riding with no hands, no feet, and as Dad put it, sometimes, no brains.  I thought Andy was amazing.

My brother had a big heart.  He loved everyone.  He loved animals, cats, dogs, and even had a pet squirrel monkey for a time named George.  Little green-faced George loved Andy.  He whistled for him, ate all kinds of fruits, veggies, and Cherrios out of Andy’s hands, climbed all over him, hugged and kissed him. Animals are a good judge of character.  When Andy went away to camp, George whistled and whistled, but Andy didn’t come.  Little George died while Andy was away, from appeared to our entire family to be a broken heart.  My brother was devastated.

Andy was that boy who was always learning how to make things for other people, be it through his teachers at school or through friends.  His mother was often the recipient of his latest creation.  She had a drawer full of his potholders made of loops strung across one of those yellow plastic looms.  Andy thrived on helping others, making anyone feel good, and working with his hands.  He spent countless hours helping people move, cleaning, do yard work, remodeling jobs, chopping wood, and driving.  After years of picking me up, every other weekend, my father lost interest in fetching me anymore for family gatherings, especially after I was an adult without a car of my own.  Without a moment’s hesitation, Andy drove to Marin County from the East Bay to get me on Christmas, Thanksgiving, and when someone had a birthday.  He never complained, was always happy to see me, and made me feel important.

It was in school that he got interested in woodworking.  Even though his cutting board ruined a roast (and my father referenced that one event as the time Andy almost poisoned the family, because no one had told him not to apply linseed oil to a cutting board), Andy still didn’t quit.  Instead, later in life, he became quite skilled as a whittler, making scores of “balls in boxes” from single blocks of wood for family and friends. As a teenager, he volunteered at the school library, learning how to repair books.  He then offered to repair anyone and everyone’s books, and even repaired a book belonging to his new father’s ex-wife, my mother.  This one act of kindness gave my mother great joy.

Andy had a sharp memory.  He not only remembered whole conversations, he would talk to anyone, anywhere, anytime, picking up right where you and he had left off last.  He spent hours talking to people that others didn’t find the time for, staying long after parties had ended to help someone clean up, and visited others in the hospital whose own relatives had three minute timers ringing in their heads that it was time to cut out. 

Andy’d play with me when my regular visit to my dad and Brunla’s house interfered with their activities and plans.  He played hours and hours of Blockhead with me (a balancing game of oddly shaped colored pieces of wood), putted fallen lemons from the trees in the backyard into the drains of the patio, so that I could pretend that I was golfing, and swung me by my arms around in the yard whenever I asked.

There was a time that I’d attended a very large house party with my dad, stepmom, and Andy, the kind of party that was catered where folks mingled throughout the whole estate.  There were three kids there my own age at the party, so consequently, I had a marvelous time.  Andy didn’t leave when Dad, Brunla, and I did; he remained to help with clean up.  He had his own car, so he could get himself home.  To my great horror when it was time for bed that night, I discovered that I had forgotten both my doll (a Barbie knockoff that I cherished because it came from a time that my father bought me a doll when it wasn’t my birthday or Christmas, just because I wanted it so much) and my expensive neck gear that plugged into slots at back of my braces.  My stepfather and mother I knew would punish me for months, if I cost them hundreds of dollars losing that neck gear. I had already accidentally tossed it out in a lunch bag at school earlier in the year.  Remedying that escapade involved climbing into the school dumpster the following Saturday to find my lunch bag out of hundreds.  So, seeing that I had messed up once again, I cried and cried that night.  My stepmother told me to go to bed, not to worry, and said that Andy would bring my doll and neck gear home.  I didn’t understand how she could say such a thing without so much as a telephone call to him or the people that had thrown the party. 

“But, my stuff's in the backyard,” I said.  She just repeated that I should go to bed, stating that Andy had the best memory of anyone she knew.  The very next morning, to my amazement, there was my brother, pulling up to the house.  Immediately, I ran out the door to his car.  Just as Brunla had said, lying on his car’s dashboard was my neck gear and doll, of which to my horror had a blond rats’ nest for hair.  How on earth could he let my doll’s hair get that messy?  I freaked internally.

Then, I saw his tired face as he leaned over his steering wheel toward the neck gear and further out to my doll to hand them both to me.  He squeezed out a smile, as he placed into my hands my lost property.  I noticed in that moment how unlike my parents Andy was.  He didn’t reprimand me for forgetting my stuff.  He didn’t complain about having to get up early to bring these things to me.  Instead, he showed me nothing but kindness.  I thanked him profusely and hugged him.  He said, “No problem.”  It was one of those moments that endeared me to him forever.  I truly had the best brother in the world.

The Saturday directly following my eleventh birthday, my dad, stepmom and Andy drove to Mill Valley to fetch me for the weekend.  I was very happy that Andy came.  I got to sit with him in the back seat the whole way back to their place.  My brother asked me about my birthday celebration with my mom.  Happily, I showed him the new calendar watch I was wearing that she had given me.  It was then that I noticed that the date was off.  Because April had thirty days, not thirty-one, the watch was off by a good twenty-four hours worth of revolutions.  Not being able to move the hour hand backward meant I had a lot of turning of that tiny knob to do.  I quickly set to work, only to turn the watch one revolution too many by mistake.  I could have died.  The only way I knew to remedy what I’d done was to do over thirty times the work I had just finished.  I could barely stomach the task that I’d just completed.  There was something about doing repetitive tasks like that one that felt worse than listening to fingernails on a chalkboard for forty-five minutes straight.  When I told Andy what I’d done, how frustrated I felt, and how I didn’t know if I’d be able to do what lay ahead of me, he said, “Huh.  That kind of stuff has never bothered me.  I’ll do it.”

“You will?” I said, wide-eyed.  I undid the clasp of my watch, handed it to him, and watched in amazement as he turned that hour hand around and around without so much as a single flinch.  It may seem like a small thing to someone else, but it meant the world to me.

Kindnesses like that had a way of adding up when it came to Andy.  I would hear from our brother living in Alaska the thoughtfulness Andy possessed, the kindnesses that he showed Steve.  It was small things.  It was large things.  Steve was happy with any present Andy got him.  It didn’t matter if the thing cost Andy a quarter at some flea market, what mattered most was Andy had remembered something that Steve had told him, possibly something that Steve had been hoping to find; Andy remembered their conversation, ran across it at the Penny Market, and bought it for him.

Andy also was hugely supportive of other people. There was a time when I needed my first job as an adult.  My stepmother suggested that we do mock interviews.  Andy was one of my potential employers.  He was such a good actor that I found myself feeling more grateful for, than scared of, my interview.  When he asked me why I thought I could handle such a job, after listing all of its tiring tasks, I responded with enthusiasm, “Because I’m a dynamo.” 

Never had I seen my brother look so proud of me, as he did in that moment.  He laughed for sheer joy.  Then he echoed my enthusiasm with, “You’re hired!”  From that day forward, he called me, “The Dynamo.”  I read such things in my birthday cards, heard him say it through other family members as they echoed the sentiment, and heard him say more often than I could count when I shared my successes with him, “Way to GO, DynaMO!”

I know many, many people have been impacted by my brother’s love.  I’ll remember most his patience, kindness, encouragement, and love.  I’ll always remember the hours that he sacrificed helping me, often with things that later would never amount to anything on my side like the very short time I attended dental assisting school only to drop out.  I'll always cherish the memory of one particular Saturday afternoon that I spent with my brother, when he discovered that I had a problem with my homework.  My assignment was to conduct some 300 fake phone calls to the fake dental office, just to log them in my fake appointment book.  I told him how every girl in school had a friend to help her to do this inside class.  It was then Andy said, “Brring, Brring.”

Then he proceeded to fake phone me some 300 times with every tooth condition that he could drum up.  This was my brother.

Rest in Peace, dear Andrew.  I love you so.

Your Dynamo, Lizzie