Knock, Knock...Richard

Richard is my Irish twin. He is 10 months my junior.

I Know. Wow! But my mother says she didn't plan it that way (I would never have assumed that). In her words, "You're father did not cooperate".

As you can see by his picture he is VERY handsome. He has a side gig as a model. He has exotic almond-shaped eyes that slant slightly. When he is in a playful mood they gleam and twinkle. When he is pissed-off they turn into daggers that could kill.

He is gifted with the same elegant frame as my sister and has long, tapering limbs and rock hard abs.

He hates his body.

Richard is also one of the most intelligent guys I know. He is literally a rocket scientist...and damn good at it! He says he hates being an engineer because he hates working with so many stiffs. But I can't imagine him doing anything else. For as long as I can remember he has loved science. As a girl I would wander into his room and poke around at all the interesting things in there. He was always studying, inventing, reconstructing... Fascinating!...and messy!

Richard is Soooo sweet and thoughtful. For example, when he wraps a gift, he doesn't just toss on some paper like most boys. He takes his time to wrap it neatly and then he does this thing with the bow (the foil kind you buy at any store) where he cuts it up so it ends up looking kind of like a chrysanthemum...and the gifts he presents to you are always exactly perfectly what you never knew you always wanted.

Richard is a man of great passion. For better or worse, he feels things with the greatest intensity for everything affects him in the most enormous way.

He is also fiercely loyal to the people in his life. He is a person you can count on to rescue or defend you without hesitation or judgment...and you better watch out because he is formidable - a 2nd degree champion black belt in Tae Kwon Doe.

He is extremely competitive...not necessarily in wanting to beat the crap out of his competitors (because that is not his character) but rather in being the most accomplished and perfect competitor.

He is especially passionate in love. He lives for love. When he is in love he is all consumed -preoccupied with desire, overflowing in amoure. He is the ultimate classic romantic as he seeks to be the knight in shining armor - choosing women who need some saving and taking care of.

Unfortunately, he is very easily offended and deeply hurt...but pain is not something he concedes to. When wounded in the slightest way, he will become combatitive or simply withdraw and vanish for a long time. Perhaps he disappears into a notebook someplace where he can write his poetry.

So, Richard has always plagued me...more so now as I haven't spoken to him in several months. We had an ugly argument in which he said some terrible things to me and I retaliated by saying some terrible things back. I've tried to reconnect with him. But he really knows how to hold a grudge.

The thing is, he has always felt that nobody cares about him and that we all think he's a big loser.

I don't know why.

Actually, it is quite the opposite.

Some time in college was when he started to withdraw from our family...and it did not go unnoticed. Since then it has been an ongoing tug-o-war to hold him tight. It seems like we are always reaching out to him and he is always pulling away...or pushing us away.

I'm not sure what made him turn away from us.

I suspect he always felt alienated as a child.

Being the only boy, he was indeed set apart from my sister and myself. My sister and I would have our girly conversations and Richard would sit quietly with nothing to contribute - how could he...he was a boy.

But I think he forgets that when we were all tucked in our beds at night - my sister and me in our room and Richard in his own, we would think about him on the other side of the wall...all alone. We would knocked on the wall to let him know that we were still with him.

Being different didn't stop at our front door. It lurked in the school yard as well. We grew up in a very dominantly white community. He visited the Principal's office on several occasions after getting into fights over his unique heritage...it seems prejudice plays out more cruelly on boys...or at least more physically.

Perhaps he was more deeply affected by my mother's lack of energy to be emotionally available to us - she was always exhausted...working the night shift as a nurse, sleeping a little and then doing the exhausting job of homemaker/mommy before heading back to the hospital. The thing is, she was not emotionally available to any of us...but she did coddle him in the mommying way. I remember her rolling up his kim and cutting up his steak well into jr. high school.

Perhaps the beatings we suffered at the hands of our father were more severe on him because he was a boy...perhaps they left more than just bruises.

But the past is in the past. It can not be changed. The time is present and in it he has a mother who lights up like a school girl when she sees him; a father that likes to talk tech with him because he is proud of how smart he is - not because he wants to quiz him and undermine his confidence; and sisters who miss him.

Friendships may fade away, Lovers may come and go...but Family is Forever.

Knock, Knock...Richard, I'm still here with you.