Patterns

My half brother from New York is visiting this week. He came to spend time with my parents, his father and step-mom, and the rest of our family. He’s 52 now. Moving in to hug him, I remembered the excitement of his arrivals throughout my childhood years, during summers and holidays; my super-cool, break-dancing, bleach blonde, rebellious brother who all my friends adored.

My younger sister and I loved his visits because it meant bent rules, extra fun, and loosened expectations. We got to stay up late, sneak Pop Tarts into bed and listen to his edgy music. The neighborhood kids all gathered around in our driveway, watching him spin and bend to a throbbing boom box on a make-shift cardboard stage. No doubt believing him to be straight from the sidewalks of New York City, instead of Upstate, his actual home.

Visits through the years have been few and far between. We live a country away and are busy with the demands and details of our own lives. This time, we sat around my parents’ dinner table for the first time as completely sober adults. One of those moments where you arrive, look around, and are blown away by the twists and turns of life. My brother, the newest member of the club with three months under his belt, shared that he immediately replaced booze with exercise and confessed he’s afraid to miss a day. “There could be worse things to replace it with,” said my sister, over a year sober. “Whatever is working for you,” I added.

That night, the realization settled on me that all three of us have been through a divorce and all three have had drinking problems that led us to choose, or accept, sobriety as the only way forward. 3 out of 3. 100%. One could say that there is a pattern of divorce and alcohol use disorder in our family. A big pattern. A dark one. I thought about our parents, and nature versus nurture. Whether these dysfunctions are genetic and in fact “run in the family.” My thoughts then turned to our children, and adverse childhood experiences and how those will shape their own choices and journeys. This led to another conversation with God in the night.

When I awoke, I was still thinking about patterns. And then perspective. Initially, my focus was on the terrible statistic and the negative stigma of being three siblings of divorce and drinking problems. This is often my first reaction, one of dismay and pessimism. But I’m learning to shift my perspective and instead look for the hope and light. And it goes something like this: We are three people who have moved through major struggles and a lot of pain. We could have let that define us and continued to roll down the slippery slope to our ultimate demise. Instead, we put in the work to accept our problems, surrender, and change course. And we continue to move in a healthy direction, each embracing faith and doing the next right thing. We are learning to love ourselves so that we can not only love others, but be good at it as well. And that, is a beautiful pattern…filled with love, strength and courage.

I now see that it takes a pattern of darkness to be able to appreciate and recognize a pattern of light.