Does one ever stop being the little brother?

Our wives had excused themselves to visit the Ladies Room, and the three of us were left to wrangle over the bill. I had instructions to pay my share, but the issue never came up as Jim, the oldest, and Kerry, the second child wrangled for the precious piece of paper.

I wouldn't have minded paying, although I thought the place was pricey. My $13 fish tacos were the cheapest item on the lunch menu.

But it would have been little to pay for the chance to spend a day with my only siblings.

It was probably the most time the three of us have spent together since before Jim left to go to college in the early 1960s. I've visited both separately, but this is one group that never considered a formal family reunion.

My wife, who is much closer to her three brothers, thinks our relationship is a bit odd. And she may be correct.

Jim, who is 7 years older than I am, has very different memories of our home life than I do. He remembers when my father struggled as an employee at Walton Feed, and even has memories of Dad getting up early in the morning to fill in for the milk man.

As long as I can remember, my father was his own boss, the owner of a small IGA grocery story who worked hard to make his business prosper.

And while he wasn't wildly successful, he always provided well for his family and had the respect of his community. Sometimes it's hard to believe we are talking about the same man.

Kerry, who is 5 years older, shared a lot of those same memories, and it is always interesting to get a small peek into the lives of my parents that I hadn't seen before.

Throughout the day it also became how different our lives have been since each of us left home.

Jim joined the Navy in the 1960s and went away to see the world. He's lived in Italy and England, New York and New Orleans, before he retired as a captain and settled in Bath, Maine. Now he takes his motorboat out onto the Kennebec River where he is teaching himself to fish, volunteers part-time in the Maine Maritime Museum and hangs out with his grandkids.

Kerry got a master's degree in business in Washington, but returned to live in our hometown of Montpelier, Idaho, when my father needed him to help with the grocery store. After the store was sold, Kerry went to work as a purchasing agent for a Soda Spring phosphate company. He is now the Bear Lake County Clerk.

I was the least practical, and I've spent most of my adult life editing this newspaper and others like it.

I continue to practice the religion of my parents and their parents before them.

My brothers are both irreligious for the most part. They aren't antagonistic as much as agnostic.

Jim has one daughter, Kerry has two daughters and six step-daughters. They each have one grandson.

I have mixed family of a dozen kids and almost two dozen grandkids.

My wife says she can see strong similarities in temperament and attitude, not to mention an overtone of the eccentric in our outlook, but I can't see it.

I can count on one hand the number of times we've been together since our mother died in 1980, and yet it took us all of five minutes to catch up when we got together on Monday. The rest of the time was spend finding stuff to do and being together.

And that was pretty much enough for me. At the end of the day, we agreed we should do it more often. But knowing the three of us, we probably won't.

Still, while these encounters are rare, it is clear the family ties run deep, and I love these strangers like brothers.