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Don't let age interfere with brotherhood
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Published: January 10, 2008
In family genetics, I am the little brother, as my big brother will never fail to remind me. But at the end of last summer, a good friend of mine who is on the board of the local organization asked me whether I had ever considered becoming a Big Brother.
Frankly, I hadn't. I helped raise three children of my own, and, given a schedule heavy with travel and professional commitments, I always worried that I wasn't doing a very good job of it. I don't hunt, I don't fish, and the word "handy" is not allowed to be used when I'm in the vicinity. I mostly felt that my kids survived in spite of me, not because of me.
I'm also 57 years old, and the last time I looked, the program wasn't called Big Grandfathers. Was I too old for this gig? Did a normal 9-year-old boy really want to hang out with an older guy? My wife and I talked it over, and she pointed out that I had more free time now than I did in my 30s and 40s, and that I wasn't officially confined to a walker yet.
So I went through the lengthy (and necessary) interview and home-visit process, feeling a little self-conscious, but also excited to discover who my Little Brother would be. When I officially qualified to be a Big Brother, I left my own little-brotherness behind, and embarked on the path of being a Professional Role Model.
I exaggerate. There is no such job description, particularly with the fine local organization Big Brothers Big Sisters in Winston-Salem. The children like my Little Brother don't need Professional Role Models. They need men and women who have learned enough about life to know that you can't go it alone.
Especially men. Desperately, quickly, urgently -- men. For every four phone calls inquiring about being a Big Sister, there is only one call about being a Big Brother. My Little Brother spent more than a year on a waiting list, waiting for a guy like me to call about possibly being the man in his life. Now two of his cousins are waiting. And waiting.
I understand why there aren't a lot of calls from men. Most of us are busy earning a living, being real-time fathers and grandfathers, doing more of the child-rearing and house chores than ever before in history. (I guess that's a male point of view, but since that's what this column's about, so be it.) And when we're not working, we enjoy watching some football, or playing golf, or tending the yard.
There are also lots of men who don't necessarily feel comfortable around a child who's not their own, or a relative. Especially if that kid is of a different color or ethnic background, or doesn't speak English well, or is living a childhood light years away from your own.
But last time I looked, there were 168 hours in a week, and all Big Brothers Big Sisters asks you to do is give up two or three of them each week with a little person who really needs some company and attention, and well, role modeling. Because by demonstrating that men can be functioning, caring and aware adults, we set an example simply by being there.
There is a major movement in black communities across our country to increase male mentoring, and this is being duplicated in Big Brother Big Sister organizations, too. And I'm not suggesting for a minute that the need for Big Sisters isn't just as critical, and their role just as important as that played by their male counterparts.
When I take my Little Brother to a Wake Forest basketball game, or to the park to toss around a football, or to my house, where I can read him Stuart Little, it does make me proud of what I'm doing. He also let me in on the fact that generational differences between us don't really matter.
"You're old," he agreed, when I posed the question that I mentioned above. "But you're still fun."
The next day, I called my big brother and said, "I never knew you had it so good." He asked me when I was taking my Little Brother hunting and fishing. I hung up on him.
■ Dale Pollock, a former dean of the School of Filmmaking at the N.C. School of the Arts, teaches film there now.
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