sibs
it’s just after seven, i got up just after six, which is better than just after five which is better than just after four, which is when i first woke up.
- DING! -
my eldest elder brother is in town this weekend, and we are going to hang out this afternoon (not to dis any of my more archie comic-inclined siblings… you know who you are… but it’s good to have a sibling who likes to hang out in bookstores) and then i may take him to dinner at my grandparents.
of course i forgot when i hatched this plan to fit in both a visit with my grandparents, who have finally returned from their vacation and my brother, here briefly from yellowknife, that there was still some soreness left over from back when everyone Wasn’t Picking Sides, and while no one is officially not speaking to anyone else, some of them haven’t exactly made any effort to contact the others at any point over the last five years or so, either.
one of those non-issues is between my eldest brother and my mother (his step-mother), over something too inexplicable to recount, even if anyone could recall the necessary details. rob and i tried to piece some of it together last night on the phone, but were largely unsuccessful. he’s happy to pretend like it never happened if my mother is, and she told me last week that she’d like to see him when he was in town, so i think we’re all green. i know what they say about love and respect, but in our family denial is the glue that holds us all together, and that’s the way we like it.
because my oldest brother is stupid, he called me yesterday at home just as i was leaving work. he doesn’t have a cell phone (even if he didn’t live in the great white north, he has no friends. his girlfriend doesn’t even like him very much.) so i had to call him back at my aunt’s last night, where i knew my father would be both visiting and answering the phone. (for the same reason i first made a point of always answering when laura’s mother phoned, even if laura had to pass me the phone to do it. it serves as a little reminder. “hello! remember me? the one you’re trying to pretend doesn’t exist?”)
my father did answer.
pause. “hi dad. it’s dane.”
“yep.” another pause. “you want to talk to roberto*?”
“please.”
“just a sec.”
my brother gets on the phone and apologizes for not calling earlier. we exchange pleasantries and tentatively make arrangements. i decide that some additional punishment is in order.
“i’m going to drag you to a family dinner,” i announce.
“which side?” he asks cautiously.
“the good side,” i reassure my half-brother. “my side.”
—
*inexplicably we often favour aliai that lengthen our normal two-syllable monikers.