I Love My Brother

By Todd

As a young boy casinos were always considered the forbidden fruit, institutions that I had no access to. That's not saying that I didn't have luck sneaking into a couple of them and walking out a few hundred dollars richer. I understood and appreciated the concept and the joy of gambling, but I was too young to enter a legal establishment. Most likely stemming from the weekly poker games my father and his friends would have at our house, combined with my brothers and some of my friends undying lust for making money without actually working, I eventually started playing cards, and it became part of my repertoire of after school and weekend activities. So when I moved to Lake Tahoe, CA after college, the accessibility to casinos was on my mind. Stateline, Nevada was only 15 miles away.

Interestingly enough though, having such ease of access to these dens of decadence and destitution, my desire to play had diminished. However that did not stop friends that visited me from taking advantage of being only a 20-minute drive from Blackjack. One particular visitor was my brother.

My brother grew up with the same viewpoint on gambling, as I possessed. Unfortunately for him he took it to a new level. You couldn't see the tendencies when he was younger. We were all so similar then. We all felt that insane rush of winning a large sum of money, as well as the bowel wrenching feeling of losing big. It is hard to ignore the hook that gambling, particularly casinos, throws out there. My brother couldn't. He became a gambling addict. He had been, unbeknownced to me, on both sides of the losing/winning pendulum over the years leading up to his visit to Lake Tahoe. At different times he had been up $5,000 and had also been down everything, up to as much as $10,000, consequently forcing him to sleep in his car in the casino parking lot.

I love my brother. He's a good man. Pretty much regardless of his actions my feelings for him wont ever change. Since going college I have lived away from my family. My infrequent visits home bring anticipated joy and excitement to see everybody. I lived in what some people consider one of the most beautiful places in the United States: Lake Tahoe. I was there for a solid decade. Every year I would see all of my friends families make sporadic visits and stay at their relative's homes. My family was the only one not willing to take a trip cross-country and visit their brother or son. Eventually I had convinced my brother to make the big journey. Twelve days was the ideal length of time for a visit, or so I thought.

Life was good for me when my brother came. I had just started dating a good woman, I had a nice job at the local ski area, and it had been a big snow year. I was excited to see my brother when he got off the plane. It had been roughly a year since our last meeting. We embraced. I love my brother.