Tag Archives: Teddy’s sister

I Got Cancelled

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My sister stopped engaging with me several years ago. “My therapist thinks it’s better this way.” My brother decided the same this past Christmas. “You’re no fun to talk to.”

Linked as children by our sweaters. (Columbia Icefield, 1972)

I had never got along exceptionally well with either of them, but I did strive to maintain at least a superficial relationship, if not for anything else, to stay connected with my nephews and nieces. I haven’t seen my sister’s son since he was seven; he’s now finishing his undergraduate degree in Italy.

The final descent of my sister’s Iron Curtain was triggered after our mother’s death, the last of the preceding generation, meaning there was now no one to say no.

My mother in the backyard of my childhood home in Toronto

The odd thing about this is that we all share financial stability as well as similar social and political grounding. There are no real axes to grind, no addictions or houses burned down. The main point of contention stems from 2006 when I sublet my sister’s Manhattan apartment and a couple of curse-laden messages were left by my former girlfriend on her answering machine.

My sister arranged a group therapy session with my brother and I. The session foundered the moment the therapist instructed us to step back from our conflict and share a personal issue with which we struggled. I shared my regret about never having children. My brother offered that he could get frustrated with fund-raising issues at his linguistics lab. My sister’s answer was exceptionally terse. “There’s nothing.” “Nothing at all?” The therapist prodded. “Nothing at all.”

My penchant for getting buried began in Anna Maria Key, Florida

I should have seen the writing on the wall at that moment, but I also knew that her operating mechanism was to avoid emotions at all costs. Which of course leads to my cancellation, a choice that’s not actually surprising given our current cultural climate.

No matter the reason – difference of opinion or indifference – our odd world continues to devolve into a social media platform where faces are deleted, voices silenced with a tap on the screen. Different perspectives aren’t negotiated but blocked, the sphere ever smaller, down the worm hole with the AI avatars, where the friendliest and most wonderful perspective of all are offered, where friends and brothers are always compliant and understanding, where my sister is probably talking to her new AI brother now. That jerk.

Funk

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It’s a weird place to be, awaiting permission from myself to start the next draft. There’s a calm to it, but it’s inert and purgatory-ish; more than anything, it’s a funk.

In the meantime I’ve been mulling over a couple of background characters for the book. First, there’s Derek’s great-grandfather, who farmed in upstate New York and drowned in a marsh when he wandered off from the house in the middle of the night. The family believes that he was undiagnosed with Alzheimer’s. And then there’s Teddy’s sister (Teddy is Dee’s co-worker at the Animal Rescue Agency), a fund manager in New York. She is round-faced and wide-eyed, but she is distant, especially for Teddy, and hasn’t see him in almost a year.I don’t know what they’re doing hanging around the fringes like this; maybe I’ll write a short story about the two of them.