Happy Birthday Bro!

copyright 2005 Dale Hansen - no reproduction without permission

My brother, my father and I took a “guy’s night out” one Thursday afternoon. I was 20 years old and between classes in college. My father had long retired and my brother was self-employed, so our time was our own.

The problem was: what to do? Any decent movies playing, at least one of us had seen. We could out for dinner, but it was still mid afternoon. If there were any sports on TV that day, we’d never know it, none of use ever got the “sports nut” bug so stereotypically male.

Finally, my brother hit upon the perfect plan, and we all went and boarded a plan to Mazatlan. We went to one of the premier resort areas in Mexico for the express reason that … well, we didn’t have anything better to do.

We found a hotel that was quite a distance from the regular tourist area, though the huge MAJOR CHAIN Hotel was clearly visible in the near distance. We were directly on the beach with an unobstructed view of Mexican sunsets over the pacific.

We had some misadventures, one or two involving shrimp and Montezuma’s revenge, a different (and unrelated) one involving a large letter E in a circle with a line through it (means no parking) and several suicidal taxi drivers, but overall, it was a great time.

Toward the end of the trip, my brother and I sat out on the porch of the hotel and we chatted, just the two of us, Dad having gone to sleep. We spoke of anything and everything, and got to know each other better than we ever had over twenty years.

It was strange that we had to travel to a foreign country to really connect with each other, especially when we lived in the same city for so long, but maybe without the distractions, in the dark, with the rolling surf echoing in front of us, maybe that was where we needed to be to see each other with fresh vision.

That was more than 20 years ago, and I remember that night with crystal clarity. Of the three intrepid adventurers that set out for land unknown, I am the only one that is still on this earth. My father died 12 years ago, my brother followed five years later.

August 27 was my brother’s birthday, and that night in Mexico is the one that comes to mind every year as I remember his boisterous rolling laughter and the light in his eyes so bright you could read by it.

Happy Birthday Glen.