Some people could make a zucchini feel homicidal.

My little brother is just two years younger than me. When he was little he liked to watch Godzilla movies. He looked just like our cousin and everyone used to think they were twins, two tow-headed little boys watching Godzilla movies and pretending to shoot each other. They watched Emergency and wanted to be firemen when they grew up; then they would watch Adam-12 and decide they wanted to be policemen when they grew up.

(I wanted to be a policeman or a fireman, too, but I was confused by the words. Fireman. Policeman. Obviously not something a girl could grow up to do. It made me sad. I use that as an example of the power of language whenever the husband starts ranting about the awkwardness of gender neutral words. Then I ask him, sweetly, if he really wants his two daughters to grow up feeling disenfranchised? I know. Not fair. But it makes him think.)

Anyway. Getting back on topic. Living here in the East, I haven't seen my brother in years, although we talk on the phone frequently. I got a letter from him the other day, an e-mail. He's been activated and is going to Iraq.

My bipolar brother, my obsessively stubborn brother, my brother who could irritate a saint into wanting to kick him in the head, my paranoid brother who sees insults behind every wisp of wind and thinks he has to immediately confront them, is going to a place where there are many, many people with guns. Oh dear.

I'm not worried about him getting hurt. I'm worried about him getting hurt by a member of his own unit.

My brother has my hands. I noticed that several years ago before either of us was married, when we were both still college students. I looked over at him and realized his hands were just like mine, only the masculine version. Same fingers, same ratio of finger length to palm width, same bone structure.

No-one else in the world has my hands. No-one else knows what it's like to be the child of our parents when they were young. No-one knows the things about me that he does, or can ever really understand some elements of my personality the way he can. Oh, I do hope he can stay out of trouble.