I only met my paternal grandmother once, on her visit from England in my early teens. She slept in my eight-by-ten bedroom, converted by my father from a kitchen when I was quite small, and I can’t remember where I slept while she was over: with my sisters? on the couch? I have slept in odd places in that childhood home–the floor, the stairs–and for many years my bedroom was the only place where I felt like the clutter, the filth, and the cacophony of that household weren’t pushing me out.
This is probably why my only memory of my grandmother is of her folding plastic bags, one by one, at the end of a table heaped with junk, in a kitchen with counters heaped with more. Outside her door the very floor was falling apart, wooden tile by tile, while in the dual-purpose closet/food cupboard opposite my room, with the sliding doors that refused to sit right on their runners, ancient tin cans and new alike served as an obstacle course for intrepid mice, who left their offerings all about the white shelves, the floor, the garbage bags of miscellanies and out-of-seasonal wear, and yes, even the cat’s dishes. The grocery store plastic bags were wedged in a container mounted on one wall; we’d stuff new ones in the top, and pull out what we needed from the bottom. This made my grandmother’s attempt at instilling order in this half-finished, half-run-down household all the stranger; to be sure, she had an efficient way of folding plastic bags, but wherever would we put them, if not back in that tube?
I never asked. She was rather quiet around me, though in hindsight I can’t tell if I was simply foisting my own feelings about the house, and the family situation in general that she’d walked into, onto her as an outsider–an intimate stranger in her son’s adult home. Maybe she was happier with seeing us than she let on; maybe she was withdrawn for other reasons entirely. Beyond this meeting, though, I would have little occasion to know the truth before she died, to establish a rapport with this woman who had been such a part of my father’s difficult childhood in turn. Certainly, my siblings and I would have the occasional conversation with her at holidays, but even then, as the years progressed and dementia set in, these conversations became as difficult to follow as they were always cordial, and remote.
These days, I don’t go to the house of my childhood if I can help it anymore. For almost ten years now, my bedroom has been my brother’s, with curious artefacts of my own life there still in the shelves. After eighteen years of loving him unconditionally as both older sister and unofficial third guardian, we had an abrupt falling out, after which time did its indifferent work. I think my attempt at unconditional love was probably the problem; it was too suffocating, although at the time I thought I was giving him something he needed–something his parents weren’t able to do due to all the pain and the anger that they were also working through. As I have been told in heated exchanges, it was “not my job” to fill the role that I did, but that is a difficult fact to accept when my three younger siblings were once rushing to me time and time again in fear about events in progress. Not a single person in that whole situation wasn’t hurting in their own way, and the only thing I can call myself thankful for now is that we all survived it–in some position, I have to hope, to become stronger people as we press on.
Regardless, my brother, too, has become an intimate stranger; I hear reports of his life and it seems to be working out well (and I really am glad); I know that he has friends and community and passions, and I have no doubt he’ll continue to grow in directions I cannot even possibly anticipate now. I have male friends in their forties, fifties, and sixties who talk of going through wild and uneven periods in their young adult life, and changing drastically thereafter: soft-spoken social workers who started out as hardened gang members; devoted family men who treated their first partners in ways that shame them to this day. Extreme cases, certainly–but object lessons all the same. Life is long, and as much as we are ever ourselves we also show a remarkable capacity for fluid expression of ourselves over time.
I don’t expect that my brother will ever forgive me for speaking up, though–it’s simply not reasonable to wait on another adult to change their mind about desiring interaction again–and so I see before us the fate of many siblings: of many people, period, who cared for each other deeply at a time and now are unknown to one another in every practical way. There are so frightfully many of those in life, too, that sometimes I find it all rather hard to bear–even if I know how utterly complicit I am in the creation of most.
The first person I loved in a romantic way, for instance, I knew in my gut I wasn’t good enough for. The person came from a stable, happy, and well-off family, and when we shared classes that person could focus on the material even at the end of the day, while I struggled to stay awake because the walls of my family house had shaken with argument late into the night. I saw myself very much as part of the problem in my family, which prevented me for years from seeing the use in extricating myself, or from seeing the possibility of transformation, let alone being good enough for another human being. How could I be, when it seemed the very fact of my existence was already so terrible for so many? I walked this person home for years, then, and we were an important part of one another’s adolescent metamorphoses, but when we went to different universities–me in a different city because I needed that geographical distance–I knew in my gut that this friend of mine deserved better. We met once for coffee that first year, quite amicably, and never spoke again. Thanks to the wonder of social media, I am fortunate to say this person seems every bit as happy as I’d hoped they would be.
Some of my strongest friendships in the years to follow only emerged “through the fire” of similar attempts at erasure on my end–for once I care about folks, it is still sometimes difficult to see that I can best show how much I care about them by being in their lives, especially when my proximity only means that they end up seeing so much more of what I’m still working through. Such is the persistent and routinely maddening legacy of self-hatred born of guilt, which can and must be undone day by day–but some people have stuck through my phases all the same, for better or for worse, and it brings me to tears just thinking about how fortunate I am.
There is also, I should add, the intimacy of genuine strangers in all of this–for I have always delighted in conversing with people I meet on the street, at bus stops, or in places I routinely frequent. I consider it important to thank people who get me from place to place, or to pass on a friendly word to people working long hours, or to greet or smile at folks in my neighbourhood, or just to ease the agitation of an interminably long line, and it’s lovely to see that so many people share the impulse. In my immediate neighbourhood, too, I’m especially mindful that there are many new immigrant families coming from parts of the world where people are generally more friendly and open on the streets with one another. I’ve had folks around here tell me that one of the greatest adjustments has been to how little eye contact, let alone conversation, most Canadians make–and I consider that very much a shame.
Nonetheless, as more acquaintanceships and friendships become mediated primarily through online media, the prevalence of the other kind of intimate stranger–the one with whom a fonder, closer past was once shared–can become decidedly alienating. On Facebook, for instance, I see friends who expertly utilize the medium for what it is: a mode of superficial performance; a lighthearted, off-the-cuff sharing of photo memes and silly status updates; a logistics tool for organizing in-person encounters (and pressuring folks into showing up); and above all else, an easy way to keep an idle eye on a wide range of people one has come to know throughout all the bizarre turns in life.
I am not very good at these kinds of performances. I’ll post enthusiastic statuses one minute, and the next minute despise their grotesque silliness. I’ll post longer statuses related to science or world news links, then take them down and replace them with just the link. And while I routinely say “Facebook isn’t really the place to have these conversations” (thinking instead, G+!), I’ll get into long-winded conversations with people who hold diametrically different views, even though I should really know better by now.
The last is especially hard, because all it really takes is one conversation where someone outs themselves as a poor debater–as dishonest, as a holder of rather ugly views for terribly articulated reasons, as profoundly un-self-aware–for all future encounters to acquire the tension of a caricatured Thanksgiving dinner, with that one awkward guest in the room. When a body falls into more arguments than they should online, this happens with depressing regularity–and I do, so something has to change on my end. (And I’m trying.) I want to have genuine conversations about topics I consider important, but in having these conversations I often just find more and more folks I don’t wish to talk to anymore. That’s a level of cynicism I don’t enjoy in myself–but to consciously use online media in a more flippant manner to avoid such encounters seems more cynical still. A third option is required.
One final anecdote: I am a disconcertingly coherent dreamer. I can read, “write”, and construct valid mathematical equations in my dreams. I even routinely dream mystery adventures that play out sensible story-lines, which of course come to their most satisfactory conclusions just before I wake up. But the strangest dreams I have are simple, calm conversations with people I used to know better, or people I feel I have harmed in some way and cannot effectively reach now to make amends. These are not self-congratulatory talks; nothing ever gets resolved in full, and in measured tones these dream personas pull no punches and make good points as to why. At best I might say I leave these dreams with a better understanding of the irreconcilable minutiae of life, but after I’ve woken, and adjusted to the fact that these conversations did not happen in real life, I feel sadly haunted above all else. Understanding alone does not bring peace.
The older I get, then, the more I realize that writing ever was and will be the means by which I best know how to communicate honestly with other people, and to navigate the ache of knowing that so very much in life is never perfectly resolved. I cannot expect to be understood; I cannot expect even to be read; and conversely, I cannot expect to understand other people, or their positions, as adequately as they, too, deserve. But there is something comforting, all the same, in continuing to make the attempt–like a marooned sailor tossing bottles into the sea–at fighting the strange life current that finds us so close, so often, to understanding and supporting one another… and then turns altogether aside.
My paternal grandmother will never know it, but I still take comfort in that one small gesture of hers which I best remember, and the promise borne within: that while understanding is hard, and helping (not hindering), often harder, we are nonetheless surrounded by other people marooned on their own islands, ever tossing message-laden bottles into that most divisive current; hoping against hope that even one finds rest on other, tender shores.
