Shortbread Cookies

It’s no coincidence that my brother is one of my best friends.  We’re Irish twins, just eighteen months apart, and we’ve done pretty much everything together for as long as I can remember.  Over the years since we both left home, I’ve lived with my brother longer than I’ve lived with anyone else.  He is, in so many respects, my foundation, my rock, and my sounding board.  There are a million moments that make my heart sing for Ghost, his path, and what he’s doing with his life, but there is one night in particular that I come back to whenever I need a reminder of how far we’ve come and where we’re going.  

Shortly before I left for Columbus, we shared a super ghetto apartment in Norwood, which is a very blue collar neighborhood in Cincinnati.  It was similar to the neighborhood we grew up in, and I think that’s one of the reasons we both found some comfort in it.  Coincidentally, it's also the neighborhood I live in now - but I'm on the other side of the tracks (literally) so it's not bad at all.  However, the apartment Ghost and I shared was for shit.  Terrible carpet, awful insulation, everything that screamed poverty.  Neither of us minded much – growing up poor makes one fairly impervious to those kinds of conditions and we sort of saw it as an upgrade from the Section 8 walkup in Mt. Auburn. 

Ghost had just returned from his job at the rim shop, where he was the only white boy installing custom made boxes for sound systems and oversized rims on the cars of dealers.  I’d finished my dental obligations for the day and we were both spent.  The apartment was a converted one family, and we had the top floor, making the layout of our space somewhat strange.  The ‘living room’ opened to a long hallway that led to the kitchen in one direction and was always really dark.  I came in and Ghost was on the futon sofa staring at a blank television screen.  I asked him what he was doing, and he held up a box of these cookies.

"Fixin to eat this whole box of cookies," he told me.  "Want to help?"
Fuck yes! 
We turned on Aqua Teen Hunger Force, chowing down on cookies and started talking about the future.  Neither of us had finished undergraduate degrees back then, and the idea was like a far off dream.  Quickly finishing one sleeve of cookies, we opened the second and that's when the conversation got real.  Ghost told me that he would know he'd made it when he'd done something with his life making him worthy of a statue.  The image of my brother's likeness in bronze has stuck with me since that night, as much because of his far reaching dream, as for his motivation to break the poverty cycle.  Now, he's an engineer, working on his MBA, and has four wonderful children and a beautiful lady.  He might disagree, but I think he's done more than enough to warrant that statue.  I return to this evening often, whenever I need a reminder of gratitude and grace.  Thanks, Ghost.