So, You're a Man Now Boy.

"Today i did something and experienced something that i havn't experienced in a long time. I spent time with my brother and i remembered how much i really do love him. I started reading a book to him. He listened and i knew that we were sharing something special. Disappointment struck me when i had to stop reading and i knew that what ever we shared in that time was something to remember. I am very lucky to have 3 brothers. No matter how many times i insulted him or how many times i hurt him i never meant to do it because he is the MOST important person in my life. I couldn't live with myself if we were to be seperated and not be able to tell him how much i really love him and how sorry i was for everything i have done to him. That is why we all need to really see what we love about our brothers."
-me, circa May of 2009, completely unedited.

Two weeks ago my mama and I dropped my younger brother, Luke, off at West Point. He began his dream of going to a military academy and defending this nation, and my mother and I became, for the first real time in my life, members of a military family. And being a military family is not "easy."

The last two weeks have been riddled with stresses and concerns, as communication between us and him has been limited to letters and a single, random phone call that came last Saturday. Otherwise, nothing. For the last 18 years the one person who has always been there, blowing up our phones and blowing out our eardrums, is gone. (Just to be fair, I'll admit I'm also known for being a little loud.) It's an awkward vacancy. When I'm not actively missing him, there's still a nagging feeling that something is missing.

It's like knowing that you've completed a puzzle but one single piece is missing, and you can't find it anywhere you look. So you live your life content that you have, for all intents and purposes, finished the puzzle. But it bothers you. Because something just isn't right. Or at least that bothers me.

Anyway, my point is - his absence is strange, and more than that - his absence hurts. It hurts and I don't have the words to accurately describe that pain (so forgive whatever this attempt to do so is). It hurts not because he's gone, because he isn't, but precisely because he isn't gone. We can still reach him. We know that every moment we aren't contacted by the academy is another moment he is fine and holding up. But the pain arises not because he is "gone," but because he isn't here. We are still a triad, a single mother and her two sons, but it's a triangle with one phantom corner. For the last few weeks and the foreseeable future all three of us have lived in a familial purgatory, where all we can do is be there for each other the best we can. There is no way out and no where to go.

Being a military family doesn't necessitate loss. But it does necessitate that we put something on the line. Someone. For the first time in my life, my white, middle class, male life I have something to lose. Someone that can be taken from me. Someone that means so much to me the very idea of losing him... I'll just say I try not to think about it.

Yet, for the first time in my life I have to think about it. I have to think about something that millions of people, my fellow neighbors, think about everyday. It is damn near statistically impossible that my mama, or I, or Luke will ever be gunned down in the street by an officer of the "law," or imprisoned to turn a profit, or randomly stopped and searched by someone looking for a reason to do either of those first two things. I will never know the pain of circumstances that drive people to leave their home countries and attempt to find refuge in the disdainful gaze of some other "First World" nation. I will never know what it is like to have my family, my mother, my brother, my children stripped from my arms and thrown into cages simply because I crossed an imaginary line. I do not have to live my life critically aware of my social status, of my race, of my gender, of my immigration status, of my privilege.

I will never know the full extent of those privileges. That is, after all, my greatest privilege.

But I do know that Luke will be okay. I know Luke isn't gone, and that he is coming back. Unlike millions of my neighbors, I am certain that I will get to talk to my loved one again. I know I have that privilege, and I am beginning to learn the responsibility that privilege carries with it.