The Beauty of Small Differences

The announcement wasn’t completely out of the blue: there’s been a rough plan in place for several months, but it always seemed so distant and indefinite. Once, one of our mutual friends asked me when Dan was leaving Denver. “He’ll wake up one day,” I mused, “and say it’s time to go.” That’s exactly how it happened—gradually, then all at once.

He announced his plans over a dinner of smashed golden potatoes, salad, pork tenderloin and red wine, the wine obviously picked to pair perfectly with the tenderloin. Saddened by the reality, it didn’t take long for the reflection engine to fire up as I reviewed our time together and what his friendship has come to mean to me.

There’s practical loss from his departure. Dan is an extraordinary cook. That pork tenderloin dinner, for example, is something he produces almost without thinking; definitely without the amount of effort it takes me to conjure something similar, and I’m no hack in the kitchen. My bachelor culinary skills are what I consider to be above average, but when you compare what I do to what Dan does it’s like comparing a five-year-old’s fingerpainting to a masterpiece by Van Gogh. Yes, technically, they both still count as art, but that’s where the comparison stops.

There are 100 other ways I’ve come to rely on his presence, for example, the confidence I receive when he looks over my outfit before I step out for a date. The emotional support over the last two years when times were tough, when work was stressful, when friendships were fraught, when a break-up occurred.

I’ll miss our front porch hang time, listening to Harry Styles, jazz, or French café pop, and sipping Vesper martinis, our self-declared house signature cocktail. (Mixed, naturally, by Dan.) That’s another thing he did—he introduced me to good music. Had I not lived with Dan I’d still be listening to the same Indie Folk Rock I attached myself to in college—nothing against it—but it’s been a joy to have a range of music available to suit a range of emotional states. Not to mention the joy that comes from discovery.

When I was starting writing after leaving the Marine Corps, unemployed and living on the sofa in his 700 sq. ft. apartment, Dan was the one who encouraged me, read early drafts, and also designed the initial aesthetic.

After the launch of The Hart & The Cur magazine, Dan has been the unpaid but ever helpful consulting designer, willing to critique covers, look over layouts, adjust font size, or show me a new and useful shortcut in Adobe as I laboriously thrashed my way around the software, two left feet in an elegant software ballet.

There’s also the small matter of his daily, constant care for me after a knee surgery in August: he drove me to the doctor, to physical therapy, to work, to friends’ houses. He changed my sheets, washed my clothes, brought my medicine three times a day. He walked my dog, cooked my meals, and cheered my slow progress. It was a herculean feat of love and self-denial; so, maybe less Hercules and more Mother Teresa.

Over the last two years there have been plenty of tiffs, arguments, and disagreements. Most of them minor. But there are two that stand out in my memory.

The first happened in June 2022. There was a heat wave in Denver, temperatures soared over 100 degrees, and the house we rented at the time had no air conditioning. Our two other brothers and father were also in town visiting. It was a very full, very hot house.

We had been living together for six months, and our differences had built tension. The added stress of hosting, plus the unbearable heat stretched the string of our relationship to beyond taut. It snapped—a shove turned into a full-blown fist fight. My dad retreated upstairs to read a book. My other brothers stepped onto the front porch to smoke, leaving us behind tussling and yelling at one another in the living room.

We didn’t immediately recover from that fight. For three months we existed in the same house hardly speaking a word to one another beyond logistical necessities. Dan felt unsafe around me—let’s just say it hadn’t been a fair fight— and it highlighted that we both had issues to work through. But he stayed, and three months later he approached me with an idea: “I think we should go to therapy,” he suggested. Our relationship was at rock bottom, and the only way to go was up, but it’s a relationship, after all, so if it was to go up then we had to go together. I agreed.

We researched several therapists, some specializing in family relationships, mostly parent-child relationships, but found none that focused on “sibling therapy”. On the recommendation of a friend we set up a consultation with a couple’s therapist. It was supposed to be a 10 minute consultation call, but after listening to our cautious opener, she hit us with this question: Who has more power in the relationship?

I felt like someone slapped me.

Thirty minutes later we were still talking, and I paused the conversation, conscious that our free, 10 minute consultation had quickly escalated into a full-blown therapy session. She mentioned to us again that she’s a couples therapist, had never worked with siblings before and slyly joked, “I’m assuming there’s no sexual component to this relationship?” We laughed and assured her there wasn’t. Ending the call, we looked at one another. “She’s it,” we both said.

For the next four months we had a 1.5 hour session with her once a week. Each session left us feeling raw and unsteady, and we emerged from those calls and shyly slouched back to our own spaces like offended puppies. It was uncomfortable, painful, and, ultimately, helpful.

We talked about our relationship growing up and who we are now as adults. We discussed how we see one another: were we operating on outdated mental models of the other? We discussed the petty things, the big things, the things we admired, liked, and appreciated about the other. We also talked about our fight in June. Our relationship tentatively grew, then flourished, and like a shy spring flower something new was blooming from the soil of the old.

While work in relationships never stops, our therapy did. By January we felt healed and equipped enough to move forward on our own. It’s bittersweet saying goodbye to an effective therapist. On some level we felt connected to her. We were definitely grateful for her. But there’s also the sense that the necessity for our time with her had ended. Plus, we could reclaim the $150 we were paying per session.

Winter gave way to Spring, and with it we moved forward confident in our newfound respect and understanding. No relationship is perfect, but we had come to trust the other, and we built on that trust and gave one another the benefit of the doubt.

But, as I mentioned, there are two fights I remember.

The second happened two weeks before he left. It was a small thing, an inconsequential miscommunication that ballooned into a shouting match. It was the kind of fight that began from nothing, a wildfire argument started from the tiniest spark. The Man in Dostoyevsky’s “Notes from the Underground” recalls these types of absurd escalating interactions,

”How many times, for instance, used I to take offense without rhyme or reason, deliberately; and of course I realized very well that I had taken offense at nothing, that the whole thing was just a piece of playacting, but in the end I would work myself up into such a state that I would be offended in good earnest.”

There were no fists this time, but words do the trick in a pinch. Ignoring the wisdom of our mother and the old Jewish king, we both went to bed that night angry and unsettled.

I later told him, “I felt something break that night.” He agreed. It wasn’t the relationship or the friendship we’d cultivated over the last two years, which was now strengthened by the threads of time, but inexplicably, yet viscerally, something had snapped, and I knew at that point It’s only a matter of days until he’s out of here.

So when we sat down to that impeccable meal of pork tenderloin and red wine and he told me he was finally heading out of Denver, I wasn’t surprised; the time had come.

My transition from the military to civilian life was smoother than it would have been because of him. These last two years he’s helped me make the most of this one life I have. He’s given me an invaluable gift by showing me how to live. We parted on the best terms, and the effort we made built a foundation upon which our friendship will rest for the remainder of our lives. I’m grateful for that. I’m grateful for him.

Freud wrote of the narcissism of small differences, that the fiercest hostility arises between those most similar; in that exact tension is another possibility: I’ve discovered the magnificent beauty of small differences through living with my brother. I have come to appreciate and respect who he is and how he is different from me. I’m grateful for the beauty we’ve discovered together in the variations of our personalities, habits, interests, and tastes.

And I’ll miss him and those small differences.