TheBanyanTree: April 5th

[Monique Young]

On April 5th there will be a reunion, of sorts, of a kind unimaginable a
year ago. On April 5th I will fly to So Cal for my brother’s wedding. On
April 5th, my stepsister Kathy and her son, Todd, will fly from Vancouver,
WA to So Cal for our brother’s wedding. As well, my stepbrothers John and
Rick will be arriving on the 5th, from Nevada and Utah, with their families
in tow. My half sister Patty is already in So Cal, as is my brother Mike,
and of course, the link between all of us, my half brother Jeff, the one
who’s getting married. The youngest, and everybody’s half brother. 

                The last time we were all in one place together at one time,
or even in the same state, was when their mother was alive. The
stepsiblings’ mother, I mean. Even at her funeral we weren’t all there, her
oldest son was on vacation, since it had already been planned and he hadn’t
been speaking to her at the time of her death. (Neither had her daughter,
but she’d shown up anyway.) That was ten years ago. 

                Ten years. 

                The funeral of their mother was awkward and uncomfortable.
Kathy and John had shown up just for the couple of hours it took to have the
service, and a short lunch afterwards, then they’d been gone again. The
other four of us, my stepmother’s son Jeff and her three stepchildren, were
the ones who paid for the funeral, helped our dad arrange it, and helped him
out. Of course, three of the four live in So Cal anyway – I do not, but I
stayed with my dad for a week, hearing over and over and over again the
story of how he’d wakened in the middle of the night to find his wife
unexpectedly dying on him at the age of 60. The story did not improve with
retellings, and I’d just left my husband and was in a precarious place of my
own. Good times.

                The three of them went their separate ways and we went ours.
Occasionally one of them would call my Dad, to see how he was, but otherwise
we just left each other alone. 

                Until last year. When Jeff announced their engagement and
his fiancée confided to me that he’d like for all his brothers and sisters
to be at his wedding, those he saw occasionally, those he heard from often,
and those he hadn’t seen since his mother had died, but he wasn’t sure about
contacting them.

                And so it came to pass. I contacted Kathy. I knew she was
still in Vancouver, and though she’d divorced and moved I found her. She
gave me the contact info for her brothers, and I sent them letters. Or
called them. I would have started with email, but neither of them use it, so
I’m told. Can you imagine that? Grown up people without email? I hear their
children have it though. I spoke with John on the phone. I told him to go to
his little brother’s wedding, and he said he’d be happy to. I spoke to Rick,
and he said he’d be there too. 

                John seemed happy to have some contact – he said no one ever
calls him. Well, no one ever calls me either, unless someone has cancer,
like Kathy did last year, or someone dies, or an urgent matter arises.
That’s okay – we do fine with email and the occasional visit when I make my
way down there. 

                Anyway. Ten years. That was like a lifetime ago. I suppose
if one is ten years old, that is a lifetime. For me it’s closer to a fifth
of a lifetime, which isn’t very much at all then, is it? The first ten years
were rather nondescript, as I was busy being a brat. The next ten were the
difficult teenage years, and those are best left in the past. The third ten
years I was busy moving away from my family, living in Europe, getting as
far away as I could. The fourth ten years was spent in the Midwest, far from
family still. And the fifth? Chaos. Turmoil. Intentional roadblocks erected
with the idea that everyone who had disapproved of me all my life could just
go get stuffed coupled with the idea that I really really really needed my
family, even if I perceived they were rejecting me. 

                It’s as if my life is neatly laid out in ten year
increments. I met my stepmother when I was ten. That should be a significant
milestone right there. It certainly was a roadblock. It stunted my growth
for decades to come. My emotional growth, certainly not my physical growth.
She never liked me, not until her children had stopped speaking to her, and
then suddenly there I was, someone she wanted to take on trips, an adult
still scared of her stepmommy. (We shall not speak here of the disastrous
trip to Mexico.) 

                My siblings were encouraged, I believe, to think poorly of
me. Some of this I know because I heard what was said about me. Others,
perhaps I made up. I don’t know. Then again, others claim the same thing, so
maybe it was all of us. Everyone has their own unique perceptions.

                I can’t help feeling a bit of trepidation, not that it
matters, and not because I have any reason to be, but sometimes the past
doesn’t stay buried where it should. Sometimes it feels like it’ll rise
right back up and bite me in the ass when I least expect it, but mostly I’m
just looking forward to seeing people who were once family and seeing what
became of them, and to seeing my brother and his fiancée happily married,
and even of just taking a few days off. 

                Ten years. I’m passing another milestone here, and there
aren’t any roadblocks this time.