Fish Hook

A few days ago, my heart felt such loss at the devastation on the other side of the world. Then yesterday, my baby brother, Norman, came to visit with his dear friend, Bridget. There is absolutely no room left in my heart to contain any more blessings!! We were swept over by an overwhelming flow of joy and clung to each other for those precious moments of rememberance and fraternal love and connection. Oh, precious, sweet man!

And so, inevitably, I've been pondering the past, and realized that as part of a large family, we were always together: we played cricket together, we climbed trees together, we bashed nails in things together, there really seems to have been nothing that stands out that Norman and I did together without all the others joining in. One event stands out, however. He managed to get a fish hook stuck in his hand fairly seriously, and he wouldn't let anyone look at it except me. Not only that, I was the only one who was allowed to pull it out. He can't have been more than 4 or 5 at the time, which put me at the ripe old age of about 10. I can't really remember much about the screams of agony, only that a bond was born. I was the chosen one! Then we all went away to our separate schools and that was that really. And here we are, 50 years later, still connected by the ties that bind.

He's going fishing today...!