Jorts: The Glue That Holds Us Together
To say that jorts are a staple of mine feels like an astronomical understatement. I honestly think it’s reached a point where they feel like more of a personality trait than a piece of clothing. Worn and well-loved, my friends are never surprised to hear me excitedly proclaim, “IT’S JORTS WEATHER!” as soon as the bleak Kingston weather begins to climb begrudgingly out of the depths of hell and gradually into the positives.
My dad chuckles; he frequently reminds me he probably owned the same pair of knee-length scuffed-up Wranglers back in the 90s. My mom always comments that I “look like a little boy” (I take this as a compliment, though I doubt she means it that way!). And as for my fifteen-year-old brother — well, he was not initially a fan either. He told me they were too long. I told him he wasn’t allowed to have opinions when he refused to even believe in the phenomenon of wearing jeans until just a few months ago.
With the ongoing circulation of jorts slander in my household, you can understand why I was surprised when my brother recently asked me if I would drive him out to a vintage market to help find a pair. At first, I thought I was being tricked, like how some sadistic pet owners find pleasure in seeing the way their dogs' faces light up when they tempt them with a sentence of all their favourite words. But he was being serious. He had a change of heart, and I beamed like a proud parent when we returned home from the market with a new pair of jorts folded in his lap.
Macroscopically, my brother and I are incredibly different people. But, like most siblings, my memories of the moments we spent apart from each other as kids are seldom and sun-bleached. We were similar as children: both stubbornly competitive and too dangerously curious for our own good. We spent summer nights racing around the neighbourhood on our bikes, chasing the sunset home before dark settled and decided our curfew. Despite the fact that we have grown into vastly different individuals, much to our parents' pride, we still choose each other's company as often as we did back when adulthood was no more than a shadow on the wall. And isn't that what love is? The constant act of choosing, of seeking out each other's company in the absence of obligation?
I've had some friends tell me that they rarely choose to spend time with their siblings because they're “too different”. I think that's bullshit. Similarity is not a condition for love; rather, love breathes similarities into existence. It happens in quiet moments, subtle shifts that often go unnoticed: the way I often catch my brother absentmindedly humming one of my favourite songs, or how his vocabulary starts to bleed into my language, and suddenly I have to check myself when my sense of humor begins to resemble that of a teenage boy. It’s not erasure, it’s a lingering imprint. Quiet reflections built out of rhythm. Reflections, that despite their subtle nature, make space for the acceptance of more apparent differences that are born inevitably from the passage of time and years of self-discovery.
I started thinking about this the other day when Silver Springs by Fleetwood Mac started playing in the car. I assumed it was a track I had cued out of habit, so when my brother started singing, it caught me off guard. I grinned and turned up the volume, singing (screaming) along as we hit the chorus. “Who sings this song again?” he asked, pausing the track momentarily. “Stevie Nicks!” I responded. “You’re right,” he said, shooting me a side eye, “And let’s keep it that way.” I laughed, and by the time the final chorus rolled around, he was screaming right along with me. I know these are simple things – a pair of shorts and a song – but I liked the idea of how something that was once just mine had turned into something that could be ours.
There is a certain dignity in the small things. When summed up, they take the shape of something tangible. Something I can comfortably hold in my hands and call love. To an onlooker, the amount of time I spend with my brother may seem bizarre, considering how opposite we are at first glance. I’ve been able to make peace with the fact that he will probably never sit down with me and watch Lady Bird, and I will likely never indulge in his straight beef and rice diet. But on a microscopic level, we mirror each other. It’s a kind of love that doesn’t require the pre-existence of likenesses, but builds a relationship on the slight way we have started to harmonize. I think there’s a beauty to that. How choosing each other's company elicits shifts that feel natural, almost undetectable. To that point, I also think my brother never would have put on those damn jorts if it wasn’t for the impeccable influence of yours truly.
