He was an early brother in my life, as well as a best friend, and the fact that he’s gone squeezes my heart.Īll these memories made me think of those rare wonderful books in which authors get boy-girl friendships absolutely right. He was 45, but I still see him as the wiry little five-year-old monkey who climbed on me the day I met him, calling me “Hey, baby, baby!” And the nine-year-old kid with the thickly-lashed clear blue eyes and goofy grin, always ready to play a prank on our sisters with me or find a new piece of wood to add to the forts, or sneak out in the middle of a desert night to hike around just for the fun of it, or ask embarrassing questions, or set up elaborate orange plastic Matchbox car racetracks with me for our Freakies cereal Freakymobiles. Yesterday, my sister called to tell me that Stephen had passed away, unexpectedly, a world away. Stevie and I weren’t great at keeping in touch (letter writing not being Stevie or my strong suit back then), but I loved seeing him at Christmas parties and catching up.
But though my sister and I moved away from Arizona, we saw our buddies as often as we could when we visited our dad. Golden eras don’t last forever, however, and divorce hit both families hard, as well as (a few years later) the untimely death of their mom, and, a few years after that, ours. We sucked on rock salt pebbles sneaked from their water softener, played with their golden retriever, planned extravagant circuses and plays that we sometimes actually put on, spent hours and hours and hours in their swimming pool playing Marco Polo, spotted UFOs over Camelback Mountain, dealt with scorpions and rattlesnakes and jumping cacti (the typical hazards of our landscape), and admired our glamorous, laughing parents.
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