Life with Brother Phil

One never realizes how easy life is when you are a child. Of course your “job” is to go to school and it seems as if life is hard; the responsibility of getting up and going to school, getting good grades, getting along with friends, parents, and siblings. However, as you get older, you realize how safe and protected you were.

Summers actually meant free time and for me it meant true fun and games with my brother Phillip. Philip was the type of boy even the adults trusted. When something happened and adults needed to get to the “bottom” of the story, they turned to Philip knowing he’d tell them the truth despite any consequences.

During this particular summer, Philip had invented a game similar to tag but which had us running through each other yards instead. The object of the game was to tag each other and then send them to the “nuthouse” set up in our yard. Ahhh, the memories of that summer and of the crazy games Philip dreamed up will give me pleasant dreams for life. Now, years later as we have grown up, some of that innocence has become lost. As I search Phillip’s eyes today, I no longer see the little boy of yesteryear with his eyes all aglow.

Today Phillip is in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba as a photographer. One would think that this creative little boy could use that imagination and creativity through the lens of the camera, but that is not the case where he lives. His pictures tell the story of the landscape; a landscape awash with dirt, broken coral and a quiet, discontent shoreline. And a story of a big brother who grew up from a bright starry eyed child into an adult who sees the real world as ugly as it truly is behind the eyes of a camera.