Three Weeks With My Brother by Nicholas Sparks, Micah Sparks Read Free Book Online Page B

struggles over the last three years, particularly about his faith. For the most part, he’d abandoned prayer, and discussing faith had become uncomfortable to him. His wife, Christine, had talked to me about her concerns a couple of times—she was devout in her Christian beliefs, as Micah himself had once been—and I slowly began to realize that somehow there was a chance we could help each other. And in that way, I began to think of the trip less as a journey around the world than a journey to rediscover who I was and how I’d developed the way I had.
    When I reflected on my childhood, I usually recalled it as light without shadow, as if the dark edges never existed. Or if they did, they were something to be reveled in, like badges of honor. Dangerous events were transformed over the years into humorous anecdotes; painful moments were modified into sweet tales of innocence. In the past, when asked about my parents, I usually responded that my mom and dad were both ordinary and typical, as was my childhood. Lately, however, I’ve come to realize that while my comments were true in some ways, they rang false in others, and it wasn’t until I had children of my own that I finally began to understand the daily pressures that must have plagued both of them. Parenthood is fraught with worry, and my parents—despite the long leash they gave us—no doubt worried about us frequently. But if raising children is difficult, I’ve learned that marriage is sometimes even more challenging, and in this, my parents’ was no exception.
    By early 1972, my parents were struggling to keep their household intact. We were children and were unaware of the details; all we knew was that my dad had begun whistling all the time, and by then, it had begun to take on ominous significance. The sound of those nameless melodies, with their pitch rising and falling, was the first of the warning signs of my father’s anger that we children grew to recognize—DEFCON 1, if you will.
    In DEFCON 2, mumbling would be added to the whistling and my dad would pace in circles, refusing to talk to anyone. DEFCON 3 was indicated by the actual thinning of his lips, and in DEFCON 4, his face would begin turning red. He was sometimes able to halt the eventual progression toward nuclear launch, but if he ever hit DEFCON 5—where he would curl his tongue against his bottom teeth so that his tongue protruded from his mouth, held in place with his top teeth, we kids knew our best option was one of two things: run or hide. We knew he’d be reaching for his belt, which had replaced the flyswatter as the instrument of punishment.
    Those moments, while still rare, were growing more frequent. Looking back, I can’t say that I blame him. In 1963, he was a young, recently married, starving student; nine years later, he was still a starving student, only with the added responsibility of providing for a family of five. Working had slowed his education to a glacial pace, and trying to write a dissertation with the three of us using the apartment as our playground in the evenings was enough to drive anyone nuts.
    My mom, on the other hand, continued to adore us unequivocally. When we tagged along with her to the store or she brought us to church, she was quick to display her pride to anyone who happened to be nearby. She had an uncanny ability to forget how rotten we were at times, but her ability to forgive was tempered by the same toughness she’d forever been instilling in us. As wild as we got, as far afield as we roamed, there was never a doubt in either my brother’s mind or mine exactly who was in charge. If mom said to be home by dinner, we were home. If she said to clean up our bedroom, we did so right away. And if we happened to make a mistake, she’d make sure that we corrected it. She also defended us like a mother bear when she felt it was merited. When a teacher slapped Micah at school, my mom stormed in that afternoon, dragging Micah and me behind