My Brother, My Captain, My... Whale Researcher

While collecting information for my literature review (due on Friday she said with an uncontrollable shaking of the hands) I came across an old favorite that I had almost forgotten existed. Michael Morporgo’s This Morning I Met A Whale. It is a picture book/early reader/novel about a young boy who tries to save a beached whale in London.

If you’ve never read it, go out and get a copy. It's one of the most beautifully sad books you’ll ever read. I gave a copy to my brother Charlie some months ago. Seeing as how he reads about as slow as a docking city cat on Sunday I really didn’t expect him to get back to me for a while. On Sunday he calls me and the conversation went a little bit like this,

"AHCHCHM" (he, for some reason I am yet to identify, always begins conversations on the phone by coughing first)

"Charlie?"

"Yes."

"Yes what? You rang me."

"Oh yes. How are you my girl?"

"Good matey. I’m at work though so I can’t talk for long."

"Oh yeah. Well I was just calling to say that I miss you. . ."

"That’s nice buddy. I miss you too."

". . . and I like my book,"

"That's great, mate."

". . . and I’ve decided that I'm going to study whales."

"Pardon?"

"Whales. I will study them."

"That’s what I do."

(Massive pause where I can literally hear the cogs in his brain working) "What?" (Clang, clang, clang)

"Whales. That’s what I’m doing."

"Oh yeah? (Translation; I’m suspicious of this as I am yet to see my little sister on a vessel of any kind, Old Man and The Sea style.)

"Yeah. I’m writing my honors on Moby-Dick and Jonah and the Big Fish."

"Saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarah (followed by a chuckle) I mean REAL whales, not paper ones."

And there is was. In a shared moment with my genetic other I watched as the ocean of my reading (not to mention the last five years of my life writing a novel all about whaling and sea beasts) swirled in around me and the uppity face of my brother sails elegantly by like some glowing Hercules.

"Mind the word vomit," he shouts to his crew as they heave their ship away from the squawking siren alone on the beach quoting lines from Moby-Dick.

In one beautifully crystallized moment he had defined all that was futile about academia. Who would want to be a Melville scholar when they could be throwing themselves on Japanese whaling ships?

So here’s to my brother! The boy whose childhood bedroom looked like a waterlogged Da’Vinci lived there. I hope you do study whales. I know you, brave (and dumb) enough to throw yourself on a whales back, fight pirates in all seven seas and turf a beached Minke back into the ocean. . . probably barehanded. My hat goes off to you, Faramir of Gondor.