Bull in a China Shop

I have a brother. He is 2 years my senior and lives in England. He's the one that got the surprise in the post (if you don't know about this, you'd best read my older post "2 Dimensional").
We went through our entire childhood not really paying attention to each other. We had sporadic periods of brotherhood whereby we'd play billy carts with a converted pram chassis and ruin the wheels within minutes. He was older and bigger so invariably he got to push and I got to ride. But those memories are few and far between. I'm sad about that. It's been my long held view that we need to give our kids good memories. You can't just rely on them arriving as if by magic, as parents we need to produce suitable conditions in which those memories will flourish. Sometimes they do just arrive though. When I was young and before those pesky seat belt rules came in, On late night trips home from a function or something, I'd lie across the back seat of my dad's Austin 1800 with my head on my big sister Bronwyn's lap and my feet on Bernard's. If I decided to get on the rear parcel shelf (why is it called that - no one ever keeps parcels there), it was invariably Bernard's head that would be kicked in the process. I am positive mum and dad didn't purposefully drive home late just so I could do that.
My boys get lots of chances to form those memories. Living where we do and having the friends that we have, driving down a beach watching migrating whales breach behind the breakers or jet skiing thru the surf, camping on the beach, four wheel driving through the rain forests on Fraser Island or going over to Moreton Island for a weekend with friends to their beach house. These are all good boy things to do. Boy things that resonate within them. I know I sound sexists and yes there are girls that would love to do it too but I'm talking about my boys and our time with them. I am a dad to boys, fate thought better of giving me a girl and I'm not one to second guess fate.
I found out over the weekend that my youngest boy Griff had had a 'confrontation' with some other bigger boys at the train station but that Lewis stepped in and protected him and warned off the aggressors. Griff literally stood close behind him and held on to his shirt for security. As a dad, this is a very, very important thing to know. Making boys into men is not hard but fraught with confusion as today's lines of what is male and what is not is blurred by social pressures, political correctness and constantly being bombarded by the ever changing media idea of what today's and tomorrow's men should be.  I want my boys to be men. Brave and willing to protect others, soulful and tempered, able to love and express that love to the world and to each other their entire lives. I don't want them to bulls in a China shop but I want them to be sure in themselves and  know their own mind. This instance of brotherly defence is a sign we are doing it right I think. The thing that makes it so impressive to me is that they didn't race home to tell me or make a big deal of it. It was just business as usual for them. It was innate. I actually found out about it sitting at a dinner party weeks later. The sting of that is tempered by the fact I take solace from the realisation it's unimportant to them, its because they are brothers, there is no other option but to be that way.
My brother and I had a similar set to on the school bus on the way home one day. I think I would have been in yr 8 and he in yr 10.  Bernard had always been the sensitive son and I was the bull in a china shop. He looked after his toys and I destroyed mine, then had a crack at his too. On this day on the bus as we were approaching our stop and walking down the centre aisle, some bullies started in on Bernard, pulling his shirt, calling him poofter and generally being cruel. I was in front of Bernard in the aisle so turned to see what the fracas was behind  me. He was angry at them but simply trying to get past, not being aggressive but just wanting to be away from them. Being me, I had a different approach. I walked back up the bus and punched the bully in the face and told him to "leave my brother the fuck alone!". We got off the bus and I felt very accomplished indeed and was waiting for his praise for coming to his rescue.  I at that time had such love for my brother, it had just welled inside me and I had reacted. No normal boy punches a kid 2 years older square in the face in front of all his bully mates as well. I expect you are all going 'awww' and 'how nice' etc now . Are you thinking I had got it wrong the way I thought we weren't close? Now think of it this way. I was 2 years below Bernard and his bully peers. I could not have made school life harder for him that day even if I had put up posters with him wearing grandmas undies picking his nose and eating it!  I had now managed to add to their existing aggression toward Bernard with the added insult of being beaten by a yr 8 kid in front of the entire bus.
Bernard was fuming and chased me home with a view to beating me to a pulp. I just didn't appreciate the situation from his point of view. As I became a man  I realise being a man is not so black and white. Understanding the needs of others is key to being a good man and I'm sure I fail at that on a daily basis. I'm better than I was as 13, but I'm still a bull in a China shop. The important thing is that I try to teach my boys not to be.