I Talked to Tim Today

April 23, 2008

Mom called a few weeks ago with the most unbelievable news: she got a phone call from Tim!

He called our parents from the Emergency Housing Group in Middletown, NY. I looked it up on the web, and it’s like a homeless shelter, but also like a rehab center. I hate to think of my brother as “homeless,” but I’m just so glad he’s OK and he’s alive and well and taken care of. We got an address, a phone number, even the name of his counselor. So we know it’s for real and not just some ruse.

I’m just speechless – and in tears. Wow wow wow. I last saw my bro 7 years ago; he was living in Florida in a small town called De Leon Springs, north of Orlando and west of Daytona. He was a hired-hand at a stable for standardbred horses at Spring Garden Ranch.

I visited Tim for a few days one January after a work-related training conference in Orlando. The weather in central Florida was sunny and mild, around 75°, and the skies were blue. Live oaks reached for the sky like skyscrapers, and the breezes rustled gently through their leaves. The small town of De Leon Springs, and neighboring DeLand, were quiet and peaceful. I felt I could leave Oklahoma and move there without a second thought. Anyway, that was the last time I saw my brother.

Tim is 7 years older than me, so I didn’t really know him that well while we were growing up. He was nearly in high school by the time I started first grade. Mostly I just remember that he played trumpet in the school band, and that he liked to hunt and fish. Our dad would take the boys fishing and hunting, and Tim became an avid fan of both sports. I remember my first – and probably my last – fishing trip, when I was about 8 years old, at Mill Creek not far from our house. I had trouble reeling my fish in so Tim would help me out.

Tim was sneaky and constantly getting into trouble. I remember one day in 3rd grade, I was riding the bus with my neighborhood friend Becky. Becky sat near the window and I near the aisle. She saw Tim outside walking, and waved. He would have been 15, in 10th grade. Well, apparently he didn’t see me sitting next to her, because he waved back – with a cigarette in his hand. Being the “good girl” that I was – not to mention the snitchy kid sister -- I promptly went home and told our mom! The minute he walked in the door she smelled his hands for smoke and announced that she knew he’d been smoking. He didn’t know how she knew. “Do you have eyes in the back of your head?” he asked her.

Tim was smart, but lazy. No, not really lazy. He was a free spirit. He lived by his own rules. If he didn’t feel like going to school, he wouldn’t. He spent 3 years in 12th grade but still didn’t graduate. Finally he took the GED, and got his diploma.

He lived in Pennsylvania with our grandparents for a while after high school. Grandma sent him back home after just a few months, saying they couldn’t support him anymore. “He drinks Mountain Dew like it’s going out of style,” I heard her say. That, and he was growing marijuana in his bedroom. He told Grandpa it was Japanese tomatoes.

So Tim came home and moved back into his downstairs bedroom. It was thereafter that we became buds. I was a young lady by then, 14 or 15, starting to like boys, think about my future, and take life a little more seriously than before.

I think that every girl needs a father to love her and hug her and pay attention to her and listen to her as she talks out the trials and tribulations of being a teenager. Our father was emotionally absent, and though we didn't realize it at the time, Tim became a "surrogate father" to my sisters and myself after he moved back home. He would let us watch him get gussied up on Friday and Saturday nights before he went partying. Sometimes he’d bring his friends home. We were always buddies with Tim’s friends. In retrospect, that’s a little weird, but we just needed attention, that’s all. They were like big brothers to us. And Tim hugged us, talked to us, let us in his room – he paid attention to us.

Tim was a character. Sometime in his 20’s he was caught driving on a revoked license and was legally forbidden to drive for 5 years. So I drove him around in my little Ford Escort. I’d take him to run his errands (go to the bank, pick up groceries, or whatever) and he’d buy us dinner then fill up my gas tank. Then, I’d drop him off at one of his pool halls: The Office. The 8-Ball. The Sportsman.

Sure, he was a drinker, just like our dad. He drank, smoked, hung out at clubs or smoky pool halls, and who knows what else. I remember him coming home from clubbing weekends, late into the next morning, drunk as a skunk. He was a wild one. But he was my bro.

Tim worked as a machinist at Latex Equipment for several years. He always came home smelling of smoke and metal shavings. To this day I still associate those smells with him. When I was in college he quit work at Latex Equipment – or was he fired for truancy? I don't remember.

He got a job with Patterson Stables on the north side of town. That was his first foray into the horse-racing business. He lived in a trailer with another hired hand we called “Smokey.” Tim would leave town from April to November to race in Louisville, Lexington, the Poconos, New Jersey. But during the winter months I’d visit him and Smokey there at the farm at least once a week.

Eventually he quit coming back into town during the winter, and that's when we lost track of him. I was in my mid-twenties. He wouldn’t call or even drop a postcard in the mail to let us know where he was. Somehow my mom was able to – as moms have a way of doing – keep a vague track of where he was and when. And somehow we knew that he was living in De Leon Springs, FL, 7 years ago.

We didn’t have a clue what had happened to him since then, until my parents got his phone call a few weeks ago from the shelter. His days of irresponsibility and making less-than-ideal choices must have finally led him to rock-bottom.

I called him, there at the shelter. He sounds different. It was good to hear him and just to know that he's OK. I'm glad to know he’s making changes in his life. He said when he went to the hospital in January, he was just 130 lbs. Tim is 6’3”! He must have been skin and bone! He’s up to 167 now, which is much better, although he did say it was what he weighed when he was 18 (he’s nearly 50 now).

I think I’ll write him a letter, and get him up to date and what’s been going on in my life since that visit to De Leon Springs. I’ll send him some pictures of his grown-up kid sister, and his 12-year old nephew whom he has never seen. After so many years of not knowing whether he is dead or alive, we finally know he is alive and well. In his own way, my wayward brother has come back to us.