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By the time I was born, my parents, high school sweethearts Mary Catherine McCreary and James Francis Xavier Bresnahan, already knew that the charmed life they had dreamed of was over. Two years earlier, after my father returned from the war, they had brought home their first child, my brother Jimmy, who was deprived of oxygen in a difficult delivery at an Army hospital. There was no testing in those days for developmental problems, so only gradually did my parents discover how severe Jimmy's brain damage was.As a small child, I sensed little of their grief. I did know that Jimmy asked a hundred questions: Can I make Jell-O? Where's my Davy Crockett hat? When's Grandma coming? Unlike other children who know what they don't know and are filled with longing for what they cannot have, Jimmy wasn't self-aware enough to complain. That, in its way, was a gift. It saved us.
My mother wanted our lives to orbit around Jimmy's, which turned her into a manic Martha Stewart and my already sweet-tempered father into a saint. It also made me uncommonly involved in my brother's life -- his protector, my parents' fallback. When I was little, I didn't resist my mother's urgings to "go out and play and take your brother with you." I chose Jimmy for my side ("If you want me, you have to take him"), and I tried to steer the games toward large motor skills that he could manage (hide-and-seek) and away from small ones that he couldn't (marbles, pickup sticks).
Jimmy was never to be left alone, and we never went anywhere he couldn't go -- not to a movie, a museum or a play. So I urged the neighborhood kids to come to my house. They loved visiting us. It wasn't just the scrumptious food or the home-churned ice cream that drew them; it was the messy, kid-centered chaos.
My parents took care of everything inside the house. In the morning, my mother would try to teach Jimmy practical things: how to brush his teeth (that was successful), tie a tie (that wasn't) or put a belt through his pant loops (a semi-success: back loops no, front loops yes.) I was left to patrol the perimeter, where I administered rough justice. I quickly learned to dislike those who slight the weak or different or unlucky. And I learned that when no one is looking, those who think of themselves as the best people can behave like the worst.
It wasn't the pale kid with asthma who taunted my brother; it was the tall, good-looking one with the Schwinn three-speed and Ted Williams bat. At an early age I kept a list of "People Who Must Be Stopped." Like some tiny, pigtailed Mike Wallace, I tracked down the parents of kids who didn't play fair and squealed on them. Twisting the training wheels on Jimmy's bike was a minor sport among the bullies. Frustrated, I went to Patrick's house and told his father that his son was the ringleader of the bunch. I was met with a blank stare and the bang of the screen door as he yelled for his wife to come down. She never did. So the next time, I threw a rock and bloodied Pat's nose. Years later, my daughter found my old report cards and was delighted to learn I got an F in deportment -- with a note from Mother Marita Joseph that I was to leave the summary executions to her.
The nuns at Good Shepherd taught as if each of us might win a Nobel Prize. There was no slow track: Each of us had a brain to be honed. But even their expansive idea of who could be taught wasn't enough to encompass Jimmy. What were my parents to do? Their main point of reference was the Kennedy family, whose situation suggested that all the money and experts in the world are not enough. Ashamed of his eldest daughter, Rosemary, who had been deprived of oxygen at birth, Joe Kennedy had her lobotomized and shipped off to a school in Wisconsin for "exceptional children." Our small town in Pennsylvania had no schools for exceptional children, and if it meant living away from home, my brother would not have gone.
Instead, he started going to a "sheltered workshop" nearby, where the production of potholders and lanyards outstripped local demand, but occupied him nonetheless. At first, Jimmy looked around and didn't understand why he was there. "I'm not handicapped," he kept saying. But soon he was engaged in the activities. At dinner, he gave a blow-by-blow of his day, which was exactly like every other day, which was why he came to like it. We were thrilled by every word.
From there, Jimmy went to work at the Navy depot in Mechanicsburg, where my father found him a job unloading color-coded boxes. He was sometimes taken advantage of, and learned words my mother never said in her life. But his boss, Rod Hagy, looked after him very closely, and the 20 years he worked there were better than we could have hoped for when he was weaving place mats. Jimmy won awards, not just the standard kind for never taking a day of sick leave, but also for coming up with ways to move boxes more efficiently. Whenever I hear anyone complain about too many handicapped spaces at Safeway, I want to tell them about Jimmy.
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