Stifling a smile, I did as he said, and after he gave me a brief tutorial I found myself engaged in an onscreen battle of wits and reflexes with my little brother. Of course, he destroyed me. Repeatedly. But I did get better as we went on, and eventually it felt like I was holding my own. Somewhat.
To my surprise, the game wasn’t just fun but downright addictive. Games about killers or mutants or soldiers or whatever had never held any appeal for me. But somehow, sitting there on the couch and using my thumbs to run around a football field with a bunch of digital teammates was a blast. Despite being in good shape, I knew Brady would always outplay me in real football—he was just so talented. But on this field, at least, I had a fighting chance. We played until the brownies were done, laughing and yelling at each other and generally sounding like two regular brothers hanging out. Not one Amish brother and one Englisch brother, just two brothers. It was wonderful.
In my mind, I added this new realization to the list.
Sometimes, technology really can bring people closer together instead of driving them apart.
We wrapped things up, shut down the game, and went into the kitchen. While I took out the brownies and grabbed some plates, he gathered ice cream, fudge sauce, and whipped topping. We each assembled our own dessert, creating two disgustingly decadent mountains of chocolate delight.
We sat and ate there at the kitchen table, chatting easily, as if there had been no contention between us lately. I found myself telling him about Lark’s upcoming trip to Thailand, and then I asked him if there was anywhere he had always wanted to go.
Brady slid a gooey piece of ice-cream slathered brownie into his mouth. “I don’t know,” he said after he swallowed. “Maybe backpacking in New Zealand.”
“I’ve seen pictures. That place is really something.”
He nodded. “Remote too. Be nice to just get away from everything. School. Teachers. Homework. Papers. Even other people.” Brady took another bite. “It will never happen, though. It’s too far away, too expensive.”
He had apparently thought about it before and had seen only obstacles. “Nice to think about, though.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
I waited to see if he would ask me where I would go. When he didn’t, I pretended that he had. “I’d like to go Germany to find the place where I lived when I was a kid.”
“But you don’t travel. You never go anywhere.” Brady slipped his spoon in his mouth.
My first response was to rise to my own defenses, but I held my tongue and tried to do what Lark had told me to do: Listen.
Brady was right in a way. My life in Lancaster County revolved around the life of my community. Traveling to faraway places did nothing to bolster that community and, in fact, could even serve to help break it down. And so we made that sacrifice, trading the freedom to travel far and wide for the peace and security of preserving our communities.
While I might envy Brady’s ability to go wherever he wanted, I realized that he might envy what I had too, the tight family bonds of my Amish life, if he understood what that was truly like. In fact, the longer I ruminated on it, the more it made sense. Whether he knew it or not, deep inside he probably longed for those kinds of bonds as well.
“I’d still like to do that, though,” I said. “I like thinking about going to Germany, even though it’s also far away and probably too expensive.”
He scraped the last of the dessert from his bowl. “Europe looks cool. I would go there.”
“Hey. That really would be fun. You and me. Backpacking or whatever.”
Brady tossed his spoon into his bowl and carried it to the sink. “Yeah. You’d have to do all the talking, though. The only German I know is gesundheit.”
I laughed as I rose to join him at the sink. “Deal,” I said, not telling him that I might not fare much better. I’d been taught High German in school, and we always read from a High German Bible as part of our worship services, but I wasn’t so hot at speaking the language myself. We said nothing more as we rinsed our dishes and put them in the dishwasher, a wordless and ordinary action shared by ordinary siblings everywhere.
It was late, but we were both still pretty wired from the video game, so before we headed off to bed for the night, I took a chance and asked Brady if he would mind helping me with something out in the garage.
He groaned, but not in a hurtful way, just in the way every fourteen-year-old who hated extra work might groan. “Not the container garden boxes again.”
“No, not those. It’s something else.”
I led the way to the garage, flipped on the light, and then picked up the skateboard from where I had propped it against the wall. I handed it to him.
“You know anything about these things?” I asked.
“About skateboards?”
“Yeah. You’re a California kid. Ever use one before?”
He shrugged. “Sure.”
“Perfect. Then maybe you can take a look at this one and tell me what’s wrong with it.”
He looked at me. “Is this a joke? Or a trick?”