Brothers Emanuel: A Memoir of an American Family Read Online Free PDF

powerful tendency to experiment—poking, prodding, testing—and to talk, and talk, and talk about everything I saw and felt. Talking about something from all the possible angles was the way I would come to understandthe world and elucidate my own views. To their credit, my parents only occasionally reached the point of exasperation where they begged me to be quiet.
    In contrast, Rahm was quiet and observant, while Ari was forceful, rambunctious, highly social, and hyperactive, and did more moving than talking. He was, in everyone’s eyes, the best-looking of the brothers, a child so cute he could break a window or a lamp and get away with it, flashing his mischievous smile that said, “You can’t possibly stay angry at me, can you?”
    Loud and physically fearless, Ari walked and talked early in order to keep up with his big brothers, and plunged into life with boundless energy and courage. His one concession to dependency was a pink pacifier that he used to soothe himself right up until he was about to go to kindergarten. As a toddler with the pacifier in his mouth he greeted one of my mother’s fellow civil rights activist friends, Roz, a grown woman, with the question “Onna fight?”
    We grew up in a home where the adults enjoyed being parents. In fact, our mother considered raising us to be the most important job she would ever have—her calling. Although she endured lots of ribbing for it, she made an intense study of what the experts said and applied it with her own variations. She was very deliberate in her parenting, always keeping in mind that our development, especially our emotional and intellectual development, depended on our early life experiences. She wanted us to feel that the world was a safe place, where we were loved and free to express our thoughts and ideas. And she endeavored to give us many diverse experiences.
    When it came to feelings, matters were a bit more complicated. We could show love and flashes of other emotions like envy, jealousy, pride, dejection, or remorse. But as I realized later in life, when problems arose we did not have many ways to discuss them deeply. The emotional vocabulary in our family was limited. We were never encouraged to articulate our deeper feelings. Indeed, discussion of how we felt tended to be brief, if not monosyllabic. After a fight or an argument our mother often required us to hug each other and kiss and say we were sorry. In this realm, physicality trumped words. So earlyon we internalized the notion that it was easier to give someone a kiss or a hug or a punch than to struggle to elucidate and articulate the nuances of our private feelings and emotions. We were not unique in this way, but for people with a proclivity for talking a lot, this gap in our verbal repertoire is a paradox.
    Considering the demands of a household that churned with activity from dawn to dusk it is possible that my parents just did not have the time or energy to resolve our resentments or jealousies. To keep order, our mother issued as few rules as possible, but enforced them consistently. She encouraged us to say what we thought in whatever language adults might use. If they cussed, we could cuss, too. And if a decision was under consideration—where to go on vacation, what movie to see—our input was often solicited.
    She also did her best to encourage our interests, which we tended to choose ourselves. The experience of having choices and the ability to influence decisions in the family makes a child feel empowered and secure rather than dependent and impotent. It is no wonder, looking back, that we grew into assertive adults who were willing to take risks. We were raised to develop our own opinions and believe in our ability to make good judgments.
    This confidence was reinforced by the remarkable amount of freedom our parents gave us from a very young age. In the early 1960s, before milk cartons were decorated with photos of abducted children and supervised “playdates”