Big Sis/Little Bro

A man holds up a tiny baby in the window. It is April 13, 1961. The man is my father. The baby is my brother, Tom. I stand in the parking lot of Nathan Littauer Hospital in Gloversville, New York waving like a windmill with gears stuck on high. I am six years old for a few more weeks. I am not allowed in the hospital, at least on the maternity floor—perhaps, I really am a dirty, germy, little urchin.

My initial reaction at Tom’s birth: disappointment. Well, that’s not entirely true. I wasn’t disappointed that he was born. I was disappointed he was a boy. I so wanted a sister. Alas, it was not to be. At 37, my mother was old at the time giving birth to a third child. There would be no more Lambdin siblings.

I marveled at Tom’s tiny fingers and tiny toes that would stretch and flex when I poked him.

Those little feet would grow to size-12 clodhoppers.

I remember how quickly I came to adore this little creature even though his crib was in my bedroom – and even though there was at least one horrifying vomit incident in the middle of the night. Tom stood up in his crib and projectile-yarked into the room in the middle of the night. Even today, I remember the splat over my kid-sized rocking chair showering Poor Pitiful Pearl, Barbie, Skipper, Tressy, and Chatty Cathy; the smell; and his wailing – and especially my mother storming into the room, the lights flashing on and yelling, “Hells bells and little fishes, hells bells and little fishes.” Although that sounds more like what my father would say. Perhaps, it was Dad. Memory is a fickle friend, isn’t it? Regardless, it was a traumatic incident (traumatic with a lower-case “t”).

Mostly, I enjoyed him and for some reason, lost to posterity, I called him Floyd. Tom/Floyd would soon move out of my bedroom after my parents added an addition to the split-level house that they bought in 1959 for $19,000. They added a tiny den for Dad, a laundry room, a bathroom, and a spacious bedroom for themselves on the opposite side of the house from the kids’ rooms. Bill moved into Mom and Dad’s room and Tom moved into Bill’s room – and plastered Ranger Rick stickers on the door.

Tom was a cutie, favoring bow ties to wear to church and for holiday pictures. He was funny, smart-smart right from the get-go, lying on his bed reading almanacs for fun. He was his big sis’s bug exterminator. With no hesitation he would come into my room when summoned, usually at dusk when the whippoorwills sang their distinctive call and the bats flew circles in the driveway, to kill whatever icky insect how found its way inside.

Tom tended to bring out the best in me. I do not remember ever feeling irritated with my little brother. I’m sure, however, I caused him distress during the shouting matches I had with my mother. She was big on control, and well, I resisted that. In a moment of questionable judgment, she read a letter addressed to me from a friend that spelled out my burgeoning romance with a guy several years older than I that I had kept secret. Hmm, speaks volumes doesn’t it that I felt like I couldn’t tell her about cute, sexy Tony? Regardless of who was at fault, probably both of us, I felt the victim, and it took me years to forgive her for that violation of my privacy. Alzheimer’s will do that.

Tom recently visited us in Florida and after dinner at a local café while we were licking ice cream cones sitting on a bench in front of the mobbed ice cream parlor (named the Fat Donkey for some reason) in downtown Cocoa Beach, I said, “I think I owe you an apology for all the friction I had with Mom and the miserable atmosphere that created for you.” “Oh, no, no,” he demurs, brushing this off as no more bothersome than some pesky gnat. He has always had a big heart.

Speaking of generosity, when Dad was dying and in denial about that and refusing to go into nursing care at the retirement community where he lived, and needed supervision for daily activities, Tom agreed to disrupt his busy life and move across New York State and in with him – into Dad’s one-bedroom apartment to sleep on the couch for what ended up being a couple of months until one last crisis hospitalization when Dad would not come home.

Little Tom grew up to be Big Tom. My mother used to look at him, her 5’8” shrunk a few inches in later life, but Tom’s stature like a stolid Sequoia at 6’3” and say, “Where did you come from?” Like my semi-prudish mother would have ever fooled around with the mailman? Fat chance! However, Tom was a true Lambdin. When my husband Jim first met my older brother Bill, and Tom, he said, “You all have the same face.”

Now, it’s just Tom and Me. First Mom died of complications from Alzheimer’s just shy of her 87^th birthday. Her passing was a relief. Fifteen-plus years of Alzheimer’s will do that. Then Bill died at age 69 suddenly in early January of 2021, 4 days before the insurrection at the Capitol. The only good thing I can say about Bill’s death is he doesn’t have to live through Trump 2.0. Then Dad died a year later at age 97. I miss the old gent but sadness softens grief’s edges when someone lives to be that old. Mostly I feel lucky that I had him until I was in my 60s.

Now, it’s just Tom and me.

I’m so grateful he’s alive—even if he’s far away in upstate New York and I see him too infrequently. He is still here–still sharing the family lore with his older sister. During ice-cream night at the Fat Donkey, we were recalling a first cruise to celebrate my parents’ 50th wedding anniversary that went disastrously wrong thanks to rough seas and a smaller, modified ship that was less seaworthy, far less seaworthy. Bill dubbed the ship, the U.S.S. Vomitorium for obvious reasons. It was a cruise marked by awful seasickness for everyone but Jim, oddly enough – rolling waves that sent the glass shelves in the gift shop tumbling to the floor smashing them and all the trinkets on them, and left cavernous dining rooms bereft of diners. It’s a story, embellished by Tom’s low-key delivery that had me peeing my pants. Coda to the story: even though we live near the second-largest cruise port in the United States, none of us but Bill has ever cruised again.

During that recent visit, Tom came in through the front door, bent over, and immediately unlaced his shoes and left them on the rug in the foyer. He repeated this behavior throughout his stay. Each time, I turned to watch him from halfway up the staircase and thought, Wow, what big shoes you have. After he went to bed for the night, I snuck down the stairs to snap a pic of his shoes.

Younger brother yes, little brother no.