A Birthday Message to My Oldest Friend



Daniel and Michael Fuchs, July, 1968, Greenburgh, New York



I often refer to Miki Kasai as my oldest friend, and this is true in the most conventional sense, but there is someone who came into my life a good three years before Miki did, and that was my brother Michael.  He’s one of the people I mention the most in this blog, because so many of my best memories involve him.  He used to accuse me of being sentimental (only not in those words), and in a sense I’m sure he’s right, despite what I’d like to think of myself, so I will do my best to avoid smarmy emotion for its own sake as I celebrate Michael James Fuchs, on the 46^th anniversary of his birth. 

The photo above is one of my favorites, and I’m so glad I scanned it.  It shows the two of us on a summer day – probably at someone’s birthday party, judging from the get-ups our mother dressed us up in – and we have stopped to pose for this picture.  My mother took the time to write on the back of it, and I think it’s important to share her words here:

"If you look at this long enough, they look very diabolical. I could write a caption, but you wouldn't approve. So I'll let you write one yourself."

I’m not quite sure what my caption would be, but the pose really defines our childhood – a series of inside jokes, laughing jags and knock-down-drag-out conflicts that seemed never to end.  No one else knew what made me laugh the way my brother did, and that’s still true today. 

With age has come distance, and like our father and his own older brother, Mike and I live in separate cities and our children see each other rarely.  We talk about wanting this to change, and I hope we can figure out a way to make this happen. 

I think part of the reason why Mike comes up so often is the nature of my blog.  Although it pretends to be a hodgepodge of “navel-gazing,” the overwhelming common thread is the notion of “past as prologue.”  Watching my two boys laugh and duke it out on a daily basis brings my own childhood rushing back, and I think back to days like the one pictured here, where two little boys, approximately the same age my sons are now, sit and plot their next move. 

Happy birthday, Mike, and thanks for all the laughs and for your undying faith in me.  You do our parents proud every day, and I’m sure they’re smiling down on you and your family from wherever they are now.  At the risk of falling into that sentimentalism of which you’ve accused me, I’ll just take one more moment to tell you I love you, and I wish only good things for you.