My brother is 22 months older than me.
As children we were very close. We had our own secret and private world our names and language. We used to spend holidays in the mountains with our parents and that was absolutely a magic place for us. The mountains, the river, the woods were our playground. We were always together searching for an adventure, a secret path, something to discover. There was “The sleeping man”: the mysterious mountain’ s profile outside our window that always looked at us from above. And “The tunnel”: dark and sinister. Only few times we tried to jump over the fence and go inside: after few steps we came back terrified. Even today when I’m thinking about my brother I always remember that place and the good times we had there.
About 30 years have passed and many things have changed. Now I see this place and the relationship with my brother in a very different way: I’m not still in love with it, and I have not to much in common with him any more. Despite childhood memories I think that life made stronger those differences that childhood and love tried to settle before. As a child I always thought that the common and painful hurt could be for us just a graze on a knee or a missing goal during a football match.
Now I know that we won’t be the same again.
