Lost boys

Is it possible for a person to be lost but still know exactly where they are? It's one of those if a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound sort of questions I guess. Lost but not.

I know where my brothers are. I mean not exactly at this moment but I know where they live and their general location; They're not lost. But they've been mostly to me and lately I've been missing them a little more than usual. Sure, we chat on the phone, on here and on video but it's not really the same as being together.

My family moved far away from the city I live in many years ago and so contact with them has been limited. My brothers are spread far and wide around the world now and hanging out with them is not possible. Lately I've been thinking about all the things we would probably have done together had they stayed around and I think wistfully about lost opportunities.

One of my brothers stayed around after the rest of the family moved away and we played American Football in the same team for several years, both as running backs, him tail back and me full back.

When he eventually moved away I was left feeling pretty isolated. Yeah, I had mates around but that's different, you know? I could have moved but I had a life here, a job, a wife (who had some family here also) so it wasn't really an option.

We're all getting on a bit now, all over 40 years old and whist that's not considered old these days a lot of years have passed that we will never get back and a lot of opportunities to do things together also.

I have a photograph of three of us; me and my two younger brothers, taken around 1983. I would have been about 13, and my brothers 8 and 4 years old respectively. It was taken on a hot summers day inside the shade-house my mum had. We'd been in there with our bathers on whilst the mist water sprayers were on to keep cool and someone, my mum I assume, had come out with a camera to take a picture. We stood there, soaked but grinning and posed in a flex-pose to demonstrate the magnificent biceps and six packs we had at the time. [Not so magnificent at that stage, later...very magnificent]. It's a good photo though and makes me smile when I look at it.

I keep it on my piano these days and look at it often remembering simpler times, the enjoyment we found as kids running amok in the outdoors and just being brothers. The photo is a great memory. We look carefree, happy and untouched by the march of time and the pressures life places on people.

I have the only copy of that photo in existence, taken on film of course, as there were no digital cameras back then and I hold it as a pretty special photograph as I could never replace it. I was going to put it on this blog but now I'm almost done with the text I feel reluctant. It's a personal moment from my life, the lives of my brothers, both of which are on steem, and I think it's a moment I don't want to share just now. My youngest brother @tarazkp may lament me not putting it up as when he was 4 years old he had amazingly developed biceps! 😂

Still, writing it out helps a little with the loss I feel at not having my brothers close by to go motor bike riding, camping, hunting, coffeeing and all the others things we would have been doing had we all lived in the same city. Writing about it brings them back to my mind fondly and I recall many of the great moments we shared growing up.

I'm seeing one of them later in the year for a short time, meeting his wife for the first time and his son, my nephew. The other I saw last year in Finland and will see again, also in Finland, next year so we'll have to cram a lot of brothering into that short space of time. I'm looking forward to it.

We will never be the same people we were in that photo, we can only be the people we are now, however we will always be brothers. They're not lost really, just absent...Long distance brothers.

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Image is me taken around 1973/74 when I was around 3 or 4 years old. My brothers were not born when this was taken.