It’s the role I play when I am around my brother, the peace-loving hippie chick, or at least the hippie chick, the one who takes her vitamins and eats all that health-conscious crap that makes the house smell like someone forgot to walk the dog.

And my brother, he seems to rather effortlessly slip into the role of the alpha-male with just a tad too much testosterone flowing through him, the one who flashes to anger when cut off in traffic, is frustrated by those who walk too slowly, and snorts in disbelief at the very mention of global warming.

But every once in a while, we get along. Momentarily, of course, but that’s an improvement.

Last week, my brother and I had spent half the day together, visiting our mother in the hospital, meeting up with his friend from work for lunch, then zipping back to the other side of town so that I could finish packing and start my trek home. My son called, mid-route, and reminded me of my forgotten promise of a haircut. And then my brother and I seemed to be heading towards familiar territory, taking on our oppositional roles.

My brother, butting in, said, “Hell, just take him around the corner from my house, where I get my hair cut.”

To understand what thoughts overwhelmed me, perhaps you’d need to see my brother’s hair, cropped close to his head, surely shampooed somewhat regularly with some delicate haircare product like a sudsy, gold bar of Dial soap, carefully styled afterwards with whatever styling goo was left on his fingertips from breakfast, be it the grease that lingers from his bacon, or maybe the sticky syrup from his pancakes, or the buttery drippings from a biscuit. No matter, the end result is the same: what little hair he has looks as though it is scared to be there.

But me, the hippie chick, I kept these thoughts to myself and simply said, “I know he wants to donate his hair to Locks of Love, though.” To that, I knew my brother would respond by sighing loudly, turning the other way to stare off into the distance.

I hadn’t given him credit for the fact that our relationship is changing, though. He’s becoming more tolerant and his response was proof. He looked at me and when his lips moved, he was speaking to me, in my language, bringing me back to a place in which we both felt comfortable, snapping me back from my thoughts of the distance between us by saying those two magic words every woman loves to hear: “It’s cheap.”

“Sounds good then.”

We agreed we’d stop by, that I’d run in while he waited in the truck and ask if they were set up for donations. Which I did. And when I climbed back in, I told my brother about my conversation with the woman inside.

“I told her my son needed a haircut and wanted to donate his hair to Locks of Love, and she said that they were set up for it, but that she was really sorry, that hair had to be 10 inches long. I laughed and told her we had plenty to spare, that I’d bring him right back.”

My brother grinned. “I wonder if she grew worried about the length of his hair when she looked out in the truck and saw me.”

“Yeah,” I said, “I think that actually was when she looked out in the parking lot.”

His grin widened. “You know that means she thought I was your son.” And as I tried to catch my breath, my older brother yammered on. “Damn, I know how old you look but I guess it means that I look even better than I thought I did.” And then he laughed, reaching for the rear-view mirror to swing it towards his face so that he could take it all in, get yet another glimpse of that mug others mistook for my son’s.

But I looked at him, at the grays sprouting here and there, the tiny wrinkles at the corners of his mouth, rimming his eye socket, and I wondered just how old he’d look if I shoved his head through the window.

I didn’t do it, of course. Maybe because I’m the peace-loving hippie chick. Or maybe it was because we were back on the road by then, moving at a fairly decent clip and, oh yeah, he was driving. Yes, strangely, I’m more likely to be generous and not commit acts of, um, violence when, y’know, someone has that much control over my, er, destiny. Fucker.

So I reminded him that people often think I’m younger than I actually am.

“Sure, of course they say that, Ann, because that’s what you say to folks when you want to be nice.”

He may as well have punched me. But I wasn’t going to go down that easily. “But I do look younger,” I said, pausing, letting my confidence catch up with my words, “I can see that in the mirror myself.”

“You’re right,” he said, that grin starting to slime across his face again, “you do look younger than you are, maybe a week, possibly two, hell, maybe you even look a whole month younger.” And as he laughed, I looked and saw a few more grays sprout around his temples.