The Return

Yesterday I saw my brother for the first time in almost a year. My brother, post-malarial, post-missional, pre-debriefing. I witnessed his first wide-eyed examination of the aisles in a grocery store, his first sip of Mountain Dew Code Red, his first viewing of the Double Rainbow Guy.
I watched him closely as he hugged Mom and Noraa (at once) and Dad, Jaynie, Aleks and Grace (separately, with Noraa coming in again for seconds, thirds, fourths and fifths) to see if he was the same before I gave him a hug of my own.
Selfishly, I wished for all signs to point to normal. I hoped that he would be the same goofy and infuriating brother I have stranglehugged for my entire life, childishly wrapping my arms around his neck and balancing between jealousy and dismissal of his talents.
I never used to think I was selfish or jealous. I remember telling people (but secretly myself) emphatically, "I'm not a jealous person, but--" and feeling the shifty-eyed expression of my soul, who knew it was being lied to. I'm jealous of love. I'm jealous of affection. I'm jealous of attention. I'm jealous of my brother's outright popularity, a kind of popularity I have never enjoyed. People immediately like my brother and crowd around him, whereas I'm friends with popular people and occasionally others mistake me for a member of that class. At the same time, I can gloat over my scholarly achievements in private, knowing that school has never come easy for my younger brother.
I missed all this while he was gone. I forgot that all of our jokes could never really be understood by my friends at school. I listened to bands like Justice and thought about how he had imbued me with an appreciation for techno, even as I pretended to scorn his musical taste.
I realized that, without Zach to talk to late into the night on weekend visits, I had no one else to really confide in, without worrying that I was burdening them with too much information or, in the case of my parents, guilt of one sort or another. I consistently told the girls who flocked to me in hopes of getting close to my brother that he never really talked to me about anything, and that we weren't really that close, but I was lying to them. He told me a lot of things. We were close.
This closeness we shared, I feared, had been stretched and gone limp like an overextended rubber band, its integrity compromised by my lack of emails and the ocean between us. Three emails and a handful of phone and Skype conversations to last almost a year. 10 months. That's the reason my brother is the popular one; he makes an effort.
I scanned his face for the tell-tale signs of a harrowing spiritual missions trip. Would he refuse to smile? Had he grown bitter from suffering observed and absorbed?
He was there. He made the same goofy faces, and told the same meandering stories of his exploits and injuries. But he was changed, too. His face and tone sobered when he spoke of the damage done to Africa by conquerers, tycoons and missionaries. In the short time we visited, he hinted at turmoil.
So I don't know. Jaynie said she gets confused when we talk about Zach. For her, there is the Zach who is her brother and there is also the Zach who just came back from Africa, neither one completely the same nor completely different from the other. I have stayed the same, prolonging my immaturity through college activities and college education and scribbling snippets of collegiate ideals across my blank computer screen. Always the older sister, I'm afraid the seesaw of experience will come down heavily on my brother's side when he finishes his two weeks of debriefing and comes home again.
As I listened to him speak and laugh and ran my hand over the back of his spiky-haired head, his buzzed hair prickling against the palm of my hand, I said without thinking, "I'm never going to stop doing this," with a petulant air that made my whole family laugh. But I know it's true. Even if Zach is different, which I know he must be, he will still be my brother, and he will always be there for me, and I will be there for him. Even if one of us is in college and the other is in Africa.