This Week's Soup: Spicy-Sweet Apple Wine Soup

A special selection for the holidays.

Wednesdays, I mostly come home from Soup Group smelling like sauteed onions. Last Wednesday, when we made the wine soup, I came home smelling of Christmas: cloves and cinnamon and honey and burgundy wine. It was a delightfully aromatic cooking experience.

The soup freezer is full, and Soup Group is on hiatus until January, freeing up us volunteers to handle our Christmas preparations and bask in the enjoyment of the holidays. Personally, I'm going to be spending time making gifts and enjoying company and, apparently, recovering from excessive revelry. Ah, the holidays.

Frere had a birthday party last night and it impacted my morning today, if you feel me. Turns out I'm not a grown up, as evidenced by my inability to refuse a drink. Foolish girl.

Nice party, though. I never know what to expect with Frere. Or, rather, what I expect from Frere, frankly, is to embarrass me. All too often, I'm right on the money: The house will be messy, from clutter, or neglect, or any one of a number of home improvement projects left unfinished. The food will not be ready until hours after the invite time, even for a dinner party planned days in advance. Worst of all, Frere will make mean commentary about me, or give me backhanded compliments in front of his friends.

So why go?

I'll do you one better at the end of 2009: Why include him as a part of my life at all? He is incredibly narcissistic, he stresses and exploits my parents, he has a hands-off parenting style that is truly disturbing sometimes. He makes epic bad decisions, monumental both in scale and in impact. He is nimble and swift like a ninja when it comes to avoiding accountability for his personal failings. He's kind of a jerk.

There is a long list of my complaints with Frere, beginning, maybe, with the time he tried to drown me in a water fountain at age 3, and spanning thirty years' worth of bullshit at varying levels, including an extremely rude interaction he had with The Handsome Man just last month (since which time I've been avoiding him).

But he's mon frere. He's my brother. And no matter what proclamation I might make in anger about excising him from my heart like a malignant tumor, it's just not possible.

Not because of my exhaustive love for his three perfect daughters, who give my life a whole other beautiful dimension than I would have known to ask for or miss in their absence.

Not because of the way my mom worries after the relationship between her only two children, and her heartache when she knows Frere and I are not getting along.

Not even because of the fact that Frere wants me in his life and, in his own way, values and likes me.

No. Those are all good reasons, I guess, but the thing that really keeps me in his life, or keeps me keeping him in my life, is that he's there regardless. As A described it so perfectly, "You keep bumping into him in your head." Yes.

And then there's the likelihood that one day, he will be all that remains and all that I'll have of my natal nuclear family. That was a happy place for me, a safe place, and a very specific place. My growing-up experience feels to me intimately unique, like nobody else could ever understand it. (Ironically, I think everybody feels that way about their growing-up experience.) It's where I first felt like I made sense. My family was a context that didn't just surround me, it explained me, it was part of what made me who I am.

Frere's my older brother - he was there for all of it. He understands. The tv shows we watched, the rules we flouted, the songs we sang, the tricks we played, the fears we shared, the fevers we endured. When I'm talking about my childhood and I say "We..." (as in "We loved that place!" or "We hated that guy!") I'm referring to "me and Frere".

And because Frere's my older brother, he was also the bossa me. I didn't eat cheeseburgers until I was 10 years old because Frere told me they were nasty...and that was sufficient recon for me - I didn't in all that time feel the need to try one for myself.

Our views and choices and even our recollection and framing of past shared events differ dramatically now, but...

There is no me without him. That's just a fact.

I had a good time at Frere's party. And when his friends toasted his best aspects, I was happy to raise my glass.