We're changing his name to Johnny

My brother is happy. I hadn't realized it until lately, but he was never happy before. Even as a kid, I don't think he was entirely happy. Don't get me wrong; there are things that have always brought joy into his life, like his kids, but real happiness has been just out of his reach.

He had all the markers of adult happiness: he had a good job, a house, terrific kids, and friends. From the outside, he probably did look happy. When he was sober, I probably assumed he was happy, too. But I didn't realize how unhappy he'd been until I saw the switch flip in February, and watched him soak up a massive tidal wave of happiness.

Her name is Francis, "but please, call me Frankie."

She's a friend of TK's ex, Becky (yes, that Becky, Char's former best friend) and they met when Frankie showed up at TK's in early February to pick up the kids. He says it was instant attraction and I don't doubt it on his end, but there must have been something because she kept finding reasons to show up at their place.

When Char and I met her, we liked her almost instantly, but we both harbored some doubts.

She knows what he's been up against, though. He's been honest with her about his addictions and why he's here instead of living near his kids. He's been upfront about his past relationships and she hasn't run screaming. He's also been clear about the fact that he could disappear in the middle of the night without any notice if he feels like he's about to slip and asks me to slap his ass back into rehab.

She's fine with it. She doesn't drink around him. She doesn't hold his past against him. And if he runs off to rehab again, she just wants one of us to let her know. She's also determined to help him get healthier than he's been; while he's done very well in his fight against alcohol and drug cravings, he hasn't done as well where food and fitness are concerned. He was getting too thin, but in the last couple of months she's cooked for him, convinced him that he'll have a much easier time keeping up with him if he actually eats. She's getting him to take long walks--I tried getting him into the gym but all he ever really did there was flirt with some of the women there. She's getting him to care more about himself.

He did care enough about himself to ask for help in the first place, but Frankie has tapped into something deeper, and he's just incredibly happy right now.

We had dinner with them last night, and when she and Char wandered off to the ladies room, I felt myself channeling my dad and in my best imitation of him, leaned across the table and told him, Jaysus, boy, don't you fock this up.

He doesn't want to, but I don't think he realizes that Char and I really don't want him to.

Frankie's a keeper. For no other reason than she makes him happy.

Homeward Bound

In a couple of hours, my brother and I will be getting on a plane and taking him home. He wants to spend Thanksgiving with his kids and grandkids, and who can blame him? He hasn’t seen them in months and he misses them; more than that he appreciates them, and wants to figure out ways to show them.

There are two things he won’t be doing, however. He won’t be seeing our sister. He won’t be staying.

Our sister is one of his triggers. While she can be a heavy drinker, she can also walk away from a bottle of alcohol without a second thought, but she has no issue with convincing him that it’s all right to go hang at a bar with her, that she’ll stop him at “just a couple of drinks.” He didn’t understand for years why he allowed her to manipulate him, or why she does it, but he’s made a decision important to his ongoing recovery: he can’t see her right now. He’s not sure he can tell her no, and he’s not at all sure she respects his efforts to stop abusing his body.

His boys are fully prepared to physically block her way to him, though I doubt it will be an issue. I don’t think anyone has told her that he’s coming home, so she’s not sitting there making plans. Once we’re there I’ll call her, and I’d like to see her for lunch or dinner, and I hope she’s not too offended by the fact that I won’t allow any access to Craig, and once I go home his kids will make sure it doesn’t happen.

And he’s not staying. One of the things we’ll do in the next few days is arrange to have his stuff packed up and moved, and then I’ll come home. After Thanksgiving his son will fly back here with him, because Craig does not want to fly alone. He’s fully capable, but he has a few doubts about being by himself in a situation where a few bucks will get him a drink or two. He’s fairly sure his internal dialogue will try to justify it as “just one drink” and he’s very aware now that just one drink will never be possible.

If you had asked me a year ago if I would be willingly bringing my brother this far into my life, I wouldn’t have even been able to laugh it off because that was a level of absurd too impossible to think about. But now he’s moving here, maybe not for good but for a year or two. It’s either this or move somewhere else, because he’s fairly sure that going home for good is the wrong move.

The thing that has been most helpful to him here, I think, is living with TK. With TK there’s no emotional baggage to pick through as there would be with me, and TK has significant experience in helping people pick through their personal crap. Their friendship is somewhat symbiotic; TK helps Craig with his addiction issues, Craig helps TK with his relationship issues. That’s something I never saw coming, because Craig doesn’t have the greatest track record, but apparently TK is learning from Craig’s mistakes.

This isn’t all about Craig, either. It started with him asking for help, but it’s turning out to be important to both of us, and not just important to our relationship as brothers. We’ve touched upon a few things that I’d frankly never considered as being pivotal in childhood development for each of us, though I should have. We seemed to have taken then same issue and gone in different directions with it, something both curious and little bit sad.

I’ll touch on that some other time.

But, in any case, we’re going home, me for a few days, Craig for a couple of weeks.