Middle Man

Growing up in Neillsville, Wisconsin

Introduction

The middle child is not quite this or that. We tend to be half way, hard to pin down as we straddle that balance between the first and last sibling. My older brother and my younger sister lived with me in the same town, same school, same everything. They seemed content with our circumstances, happy to take life a step at a time, remaining close to family and whatever life’s trajectory threw their way. But as the middle child, neither here nor there, thinking I could find a better fit elsewhere, I left as soon as I could.

We grew up together in a small midwestern town, which at the time seemed wholly typical and unexceptionally American. It’s only now, most of a lifetime later, that I can see the improbable fortune we enjoyed growing up there, and the privilege of a childhood in that rapidly vanishing past of an American that is all but forgotten.

I wrote this to remember my brother, who was with me every day of those first eighteen years, but whose many under-appreciated strengths I grew to recognize over time. He understood, better than I, that most of what we learn cannot be written down.

A middle man passes stories from one person to another, and inevitably many important details are lost in transmission. I’ve tried to keep to the facts as best I remember them, but my flawed memories and many errors will no doubt be obvious to anyone who was there. For that I humbly apologize.

2023-11-12