witness

It’s the first full day of fall and I’m in hibernation mode. I finished a grant application yesterday, which means I woke up today with nothing pressing to do. I decided to see a matinee of The Skeleton Twins and loved it, but found myself wondering whether people from functional families would appreciate it, too. The film is about two siblings who haven’t spoken in 10 years; just as the sister is about to commit suicide she gets a call from a hospital in LA—her brother tried to slit his wrists. We learn that their father took his own life, too, and their mother is a narcissistic hippie who blows in and out of their lives whenever it suits her. When I read the summary this morning, I knew it was my kind of film. It’s fairly accurate to say I’m estranged from my siblings and we haven’t really spent time together since my father died in 2004. Last weekend my cousin came to town and I spent a wonderful afternoon in Brooklyn with him and his girlfriend. At one point he told me about our thirteen-year-old cousin who’s just starting to play football in Toronto. I said, “It’s too bad I’m not in touch with my brother—he plays for the CFL.” And my cousin (who’s much younger than me) didn’t even know who I was talking about. He’s not alone—there are plenty of people in my life today who have no idea that I have a younger brother and sister. I have an older brother and sister, too, and most of my friends know about them, though some people assume I’m an only child because I pretty much operate that way. When I went through all my unpublished manuscripts this summer I was struck by how family-centered the stories are; my father shows up again and again, and there are almost always grandparents there to comfort and guide the child narrator. Not a lot of stories about mothers, though the one I’m readying for publication now (Billie’s Blues) starts with a single mother heading off to night school, which was my experience as a child. I write about familial dysfunction in my novels but not in the picture books; when you’re young, you need to believe that your family is your sanctuary. While my cousin was in town we reminisced about our large extended family and in The Skeleton Twins the siblings do the same—they laugh about the past, even the therapist they had to see after their father’s suicide. But there’s a lot of sadness in their lives, too. That’s what I miss most about having siblings—the way they served as witnesses to the major and minor events of our shared life. I have such vivid memories of my childhood and can’t really share (or verify) them because my older siblings are either out of touch or forward-looking only. My younger siblings weren’t even born until I was a teenager and though we were close when they were young, they feel like strangers now. I came home from the film and found a message on Facebook from my little brother. He’s in Hong Kong and wanted my mailing address. I’ve stopped asking or even hoping for a “normal” relationship with him. If one email a year is what I get, that’s what I get. I want to talk to him about Ferguson and everything that’s going on in the NFL, but my brother doesn’t want to have those kinds of conversations with me. It’s strange to be bound to people who are so distant. But someday they may need a witness and turn back to me, though my siblings tend not to trust my version of events…