“The monotony & solitude of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind” ~Albert Einstein.

My life is filled with monotony and solitude, so that is why I am so creative! For whatever, reason or destiny, I prefer an empty and spacious life. And yet today finds me fretful.

My brother is nearing the end of his life and I sat in silence for a while, letting thoughts arise. I remember him more as a little boy than as a man. He would wait for me to come home from school and then we would play together. TV was new and exciting and we watched Howdy Doody and other children’s shows. Snickers was one of their sponsors and we learned that they were delicious!

When the Popsicle man rang his bell, we would rush out into the street to stop him. For a nickel you could get a popsicle (that was usually what we got). There were exotic treats that cost far more, but we were popsicle buyers.

My brother would wipe his mouth all the time and he told us that his “spit leaked.” He would never eat what our mother prepared us for supper, as we called it. He existed on bread and mayonnaise for the longest time. Once he told a parent on the street that he was never fed. She knew us well and knew that was a tale he was telling. When the polio epidemic started, he once refused to eat pancakes with powdered sugar on top. He said the powdered sugar was polio germs.

We had reason to be afraid. The woman across the street came home in an iron lung and many children we knew got it. But I digress from my brother’s story.

One time a little boy across the street threw a rock at him and it left a scar on his eyebrow. Our mother was livid about this. The two little boys next door visited us often. The older peed in our milk bottles on the porch waiting to be replaced with full new bottles of milk. But Jimmy Boy, as he was called, filled them for us.

We rescued baby birds that fell from their nests on the big oak tree next door. Our mother always let us try and nurse them back to health, but they always died.

Today my little brother, once a tow-headed little kid, lies in hospice waiting to be carried home on angel wings, at least I tell myself that. I am deeply sad and yet relieved that his suffering will soon come to an end. I am a little girl typing this story. I started writing in third grade and I am still having a go at it. I am glad that Einstein advocated the kind of life that I live. It has proven to be my joy and sustenance.

I pray that for my little brother, a new journey will begin….

Vicki Woodyard