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Nick and Me
Anyone who has known the Soters for some time has probably heard the drowning story. It starts with my traveling to Mexico with my older brother, Nick, his wife, Dora, and his daughter, Eva, and usually ends with Nick saying, “I imagined myself calling George and Effie [our parents] and saying, ‘I’ve got some good news and some bad news. The good news is that Tom got to Mexico. The bad news is he drowned.”
That was in 1987, and I’m happy to say that I didn’t drown, thanks almost entirely to Nick. Of course, I wouldn’t have been swimming out so far from shore if I hadn’t been following Nick, but, hey, that’s what younger brothers do. They follow. I had followed him, as he swam out past the breaking waves – and by the time we were beyond them, I looked back towards the beach, which now seemed a million miles away! I immediately started swimming back, but my arms were heavy, the trip back impossible. Nick didn’t let me give up, however: he patiently swam alongside me, his calm voice keeping me from panicking, as he told me to “lift one arm after the other,” and very methodically talked me in. I had followed him out, but he followed me in, or as the Bibleputs it: “The first shall come last and the last shall come first.”
I’ve always been No. 2 with Nick, but that’s natural. He was born in March 1955 and I entered the scene in October 1956. Our relationship – as is the case with many brothers – was often ambiguous. I remember we would watch the Vic Morrow TV series Combat! together and then act out war games (I was invariably the Nazi). Or we’d watch Popeye cartoons (and I was invariably Popeye’s nemesis, Brutus, one ending up with a swollen neck from a blow by “Popeye” Nick). Or we’d watch the 104 episodes of The Adventures of Superman over and over again (without re-enactments) – and to this day, when Superman is mentioned, Nick will go on about what a ridiculous disguise Superman has as Clark Kent: “A pair of glasses!” Nick says. “Everyone else is not very bright!”
Nick learned to be logical and critical primarily from our mother, I think. She was free with her opinions and analysis, with one of her favorite all-purpose words being “stupid.” She’d often comment on people she’d dislike by saying “He’s stupid” (as in, “That Kissinger! He’s stupid!”) She didn’t mean that the person was dumb; she just didn’t like him personally or politically. Nick, like Effie, loves to argue issues, looking for logical flaws in his opponent’s side and taking great pride in debate. Effie was always proud of Nick’s high IQ, telling the story once of how she learned of the results of an intelligence test:
“They called me in and said, ‘Mrs. Soter, Mrs. Soter! Come here!’ ‘Oh, Jesus Christ,’ I thought. ‘He failed. I’m the first person they called. They want to take me privately so they can tell me about it.’ I got up and I went in and I said, ‘He failed didn’t he?’ ‘He failed?!’[they said.] ‘We haven’t seen anybody so bright! He’s the most exceptional child that we’ve ever met!’ Boy, was I pleased.”
“Nick was born and he was quite perfect: handsome, intelligent, and fiercely independent,” George recalled some years later. “[He] was an easy child to take care of. He ate very well; he slept easily; he cried only with just cause. From a very early age, he responded enthusiastically to people. But he didn’t mind being left alone either. The first summer of his life he spent much of the time on the open sun-porch of our apartment – at first in his crib, later in a playpen.”
George noted Nick’s fierce independence. He always went his own way, and that included traveling, which, as our dad commented, Nick liked doing almost from birth: “Towards the end of that first summer [of his life], he took his first trip….from the earliest age, he always traveled easily.”
He went to India, Mexico, South America, Greece, England, France, Turkey, Morocco. He grew his hair long, he cut it real short. He gave up meat but not fish, and delighted in making glorious meals (George often said that “Nicky recalls events by the meals we ate at each of them.”).
To this day, he can be maddening laconic. If you catch him in that mood, he is as tight-lipped as Gary Cooper, and it is a torturous affair to get two words out of him. But get him in a talkative mood and he won’t be quiet.
He loves watching “the game” on TV (what game? Almost any sporting event he can find) and will often have it on the radio in the kitchen as he cooks. He also loves playing the game, though sometimes it was frustrating. Once, in Mexico, he came back from a basketball game in which he had “jacked up” his leg. “But I couldn’t complain or sit out,” he said, “because one of the guys on my team only had one leg, and hopped around without stopping. How could I sit out?”
Such concern for fairness (and probably his love of debate) led Nick to his career as a lawyer in San Francisco, which he has called home since 1975. Starting in the mid-eighties, Nick, Dora, Eva (and later Zoe) made annual pilgrimages to New York at Christmas to visit us, but with the death of George and Effie, their visits have become more sporadic. That’s too bad, but I visit them every year to celebrate my birthday there because I want to make the event something special, and I know I can always count on Nick and the “Soters West” (as George dubbed them) to give me a great time.
Which brings me to the point of this lengthy memoir: on the occasion of Nick’s 60th birthday, in full sentimental mode, I offer my deep love to my big brother and hope that he continues to have much happiness. And to sum up, I’d like to relate some final memories.
There was a dark side to our relationship. As George once recalled: “Nick was sometimes quite nasty and would say things to make Tom cry. At other times, he was very protective of him. Out in the park, if any bigger boys picked on Tom, Nick would really stick up for him. Tommy thought Nick was something great. Even when he hit him.”
Indeed, as a small boy I often thought Nick was trying to kill me. I remember once, at an early age, walking down the long corridor at our home when I felt a thud in the back of my head. I ran crying to my mother. She found a toy arrow dangling from the back, not having penetrated very deeply. Nick, ingeniously, had removed the rubber suction-cup tip from a toy arrow and had sharpened it in a pencil sharpener. That was remarkable by itself. The fact that he could hit the back of my head using a bow and arrow and get the arrow to penetrate was even more remarkable still.
He made up for such murderous attempts years later, in 1987, when we were in Mexico together and he saved me from drowning. Less dramatically, but more pointedly, was the “fan incident.” I can’t stand the heat. So of course, I went to Mexico with Nick and his family and stayed in a cinder block house that seemed to bake at night. Nick and I slept in the same room on two small cots, side by side, with an oscillating fan alternating between the two of us. One night, as I lay there in bed, sweltering, I selfishly thought, “I would be cooler if the fan were just pointed at me the whole time.” Following that reasoning, I then thought, “If I were in bed with Nick, I could put the fan on both of us for the whole time.” Thinking myself very clever, I stopped the fan’s oscillations and aimed it at the sleeping Nick. I began to climb into his tiny cot with him, when he suddenly awoke. “What are you doing?” he said. I explained my theory to him. Nick made a face. “You idiot! It won’t cool us down! We’ll get even warmer because of our shared body heat! Now, go back to your cot and go to sleep!”
I sighed, and eventually fell asleep. When I woke up, I found out why. To my surprise, the fan was not oscillating, anymore. It was pointed directly at me. Nick always insisted he did this to keep me from trying any more crazy ideas, but to me, it was just part of the older brother paradox: sometimes he’s trying to kill you, but the rest of the time, he’s there to save your life.
March 11, 2015
