B2X at 79 (and counting), 2023

Text by Bruce Berman
Photograph by Alvino Viscaino

Long talk with my sister. For better or worse we’ve been rappin’ for all my years and she was rappin’ for four and a half years before I ever hit this planet. We now share our challenges of aging. Health issues are starting to dominate our conversations, both ways. We share our hard-earned wisdom. We try to encourage each other in the ways we always have: she tells me hard truths that I have always whimpily avoided (chronic head-in-sand), I offer my optimism and comedy, which she never had the luxury of getting. We don’t mention our politics. Some minefields aren’t survivable. We don’t dare touch religion (those two being which is exactly what our parents cautioned us not do), we have a bond because we’re the last two from our family, the last two from an era now long gone, a time when America meant neighborhood loyalty, no reference points for all the dividing wedges that now control our country–and us-when she was “the boss,” and I was the tag-along little brother and our main concern was what was going to be the next fun.
Our youth is now a mist harder and harder to remember or to discuss, it is all behind, and what’s ahead is a bit stress-inducing.
We rap on.