I’m sitting alone in a hotel room in Poole, UK, before the day begins.
Time is a funny thing.
I don’t get to meet my older brother often, but when I do, it feels like nothing has changed. He was waiting for me at the bus stop, and within minutes we were walking along the bay, talking as if we had seen each other last week rather than more than a year ago. The conversation flowed naturally. I don’t think there was ever an awkward silence.
Later, we met his wife, stepdaughter and their new grandchild at a good old-fashioned English pub. Again, there was no sense of the time that had passed. I met my brother in Cambodia for his daughter’s wedding more than a year ago. Before that, it was Johannesburg in 2016. Let’s just say we don’t get to see each other often. Living on different continents, almost at opposite ends of the world, makes regular reunions difficult.
Some things never change, except our appearance, of course.
I turn forty-seven today. My brother will turn fifty-three in two days. Yet somehow the same dynamic still exists between us. He is still my bigger brother. I still listen as he tells me things. It takes me back to when I was a boy, listening to him explain the world to me. In some ways, he still does.
I watch him with his family. I listen as he talks about our childhood and tries to paint a picture of those early years. His memory is clearer because he was older. He remembers things I’ve forgotten.
We still enjoy being active, just as we did when we were boys riding our BMXs, playing cops and robbers and building forts. Back then, we explored the streets around our home. Now we walk along Poole’s waterfront and talk about health, politics, philosophy, theology, culture and whatever else comes to mind. The conversation flows, just as time does.
Suddenly, I’m on a bus to London. I’ve said goodbye. Soon I’ll be on a plane back to Stockholm. I’ll continue my life. He’ll continue his. And when our paths cross again, we’ll pick up the conversation exactly where we left it.