My poor little brother had a rough time of it growing up. He was adopted at the age of ten months into our Norman Rockwell family, which included an older sister who had been PERFECTLY content as an only child and figured that if she was nasty enough to this little interloper,  he might get sent back.

It didn't work. They kept the screaming creature in spite of my protests, and he eventually became part of the family and was even housebroken. He was kind of useful to me in time -- I was socially inept and he served as a captive playmate. I used my heavy-handed directorial style to mold him into a minor supporting character in my elaborate fantasies.

I had him set up our hundreds of plastic zoo animals  all over his bedroom -- in carefully thought-out families, clans, schools, parties -- so that we could play the soap-operaesque role-playing game I had created. Unfortunately for Steve, I usually tired of the game shortly after the lengthy setup, and he was left with the messy room.

I read him books that I borrowed from the public library in Invisibalin and kept stored in a compartment in the back of my head. He would listen raptly as I wove a complex story over the course of several days, and then lost interest just as he was hooked. "Sorry, I had to get that one back to the library!"

Once in awhile I took him to Invisibalin (we would sit on the top of the footboard of my bed and then flop backwards onto the bed to enter the world) but he had to keep his eyes closed the whole time we were there.

Those were the good times. More often I was terrible to him. My parents compared my sistering skills to those of Lucy Van Pelt and  Nellie Olsen -- and they were being charitable. If my brother was puking his dinner all over the hallway carpet I would suggest that he was faking for attention. Stitches? That drama queen! If he got into trouble at school (which he did a lot as a young kid) I would cackle with glee. I was the big sister from hell most of the time.

Now, here is the part my brother probably doesn't know...my mom told me more than a few times that all of Steve's problems were MY fault. When he got paddled in the "red room" at the scary Christian school we attended it was because I taught him bad behavior (I was pretty much a goody-two-shoes at school). When he struggled to learn to read at that same dopey school, it was because I had damaged his self-esteem. When he got into fights in elementary and junior high it was because of my continual abuse. And the best part -- if he ended up a failure in life, it would be MY fault, because I had never accepted him as a brother because he was adopted. 

Now that last part is bull -- I would have resented his presence every bit as much if he had been my genetic flesh-and-blood. I never used his adoptive status as fodder for my attacks. I'm much more creative than that!

However, when Steve graduated from high school (valedictorian -- did I get any credit for THAT?) and moved to San Luis Obispo, I started the waiting game to see if the damage I did to my poor, gentle, bumbling baby brother would drive him to become a homeless drunk, a back-alley abortionist, or an axe murderer. 

He bought a motorcycle right off the bat -- after totalling TWO cars before his seventeenth birthday -- and was in a serious accident in which he lost an inch of his femur and his track star status. I had never even been ON a motorcycle, but that was my fault because I knew he had a bike and my parents did not.

Then, no thanks to sister-dearest, he became an engineering student at Cal Poly. He dropped out with only his senior project between him and a degree...probably because I tormented him about his posture and picking his nose when he was eight.

He was also a manager and "lead screamer" for some kind of Eastern European death metal bands. I'm gonna say that was my fault.

He was a tour guide for Hearst Castle for years and years and he was damn good -- amazing given the deep scars on his psyche from my razorlike claws.

He pretty much disappeared from our lives during that time. My mom didn't even get birthday cards or phone calls. I don't know for sure if she blames me but I'd probably risk a small bet.

For twenty years I have thought fondly of my brother but had almost no contact with him. Then...along came Facebook. Steve E. Miller is friends with Cruel Wench!

He is not a bum or a chop-shop doc or a psycho killer. He IS in therapy but he says it is not all because of me. It's not even all because of our mom. He's a decent guy. Kind and sensitive and sensible. He is fabulously creative and shares his abilities and his motivation with many friends and fellow artists in his community. He's a really good guy, something I can tell from chatting with him, reading his status updates, and seeing the supportive comments from his many friends. I'm sure none of that is my fault, but it makes me feel a lot better!

Here are some examples of my long-lost baby brother's art:

 The Universe of the Leaf was put on exhibit at an SLO gallery.

http://semillerimages.zenfolio.com/