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Illustration by Alex Deadman-Wylie
I did something recently that I’ve imagined doing for many years. For a long time, whenever I drove past this neighbourhood, I thought about passing close to their front door, just to see if they still lived there. I wondered what it would be like to knock on their door after all these years, but I never did it. I would just keep driving until I thought about something else.
But on that day, something changed. As I was approached that same neighbourhood, I dared myself to do it.
I told myself, “One life. Life is so short. Do it. Imagine the worst thing that can happen and if you can handle that, you’ll be okay.”
I pictured myself knocking on their door. The door opened and I was assaulted by their fury. “What are you doing here? Go away! We have nothing to say to you!” Then I saw myself walking away, shaken but not broken. I was all right.
That was all I needed to turn the corner. I parked the car, walked toward my sister’s front door and, shaking inside, I pressed the bell.
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My brother-in-law opened the door. He paced a bit and said my name many times, as though trying to convince himself that I was real. We hugged quickly. It was awkward, so to explain my surprise visit I said, “I was in the neighbourhood and I thought, life is short. I’m dropping in for a hug.”
He smiled and I smiled as I sat down in their living room. A few minutes later, my sister arrived. It had been many years since our last conversation. We hugged and smiled. As though our estrangement never happened.
But it did, for decades really. We’d intersect over the years because we had to, but after childhood, there was always a chasm between us. And over time, it was filled with debris, making us believe that reconciliation was not possible. My sister yelled at me once, “We’re too different from each other!”
But I couldn’t understand it. I saw the commonalities. Maybe because I needed them and she didn’t?
There were wounds and secrets of our upbringing that made me an enemy to her. At least that’s what I thought must have happened. We were like two foreigners as we got older. Whenever we met it was as though each of us spoke a different language. We could not understand one another.
But there was that one time we connected: Doctors found a tumour the size of a lemon in my breast. My mother must have told my sister. And one day, she knocked on my door and for the first time since we were children, we were alone together in my apartment. We were both shaking. Awkward, like foreigners again, she asked about my tumour. We talked about our relationship. We vowed never to sever it again. We hugged, we cried, we smiled.
But it didn’t last.
Within a few months, like plunging a spoon into warm pudding and pulling it back out, everything went back to the way it was. As though nothing ever entered, nothing ever changed.
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Our parents were immigrants, without any family nearby. So, when they died, my sister and I were the only tether to our past in our hometown. But my sister had her own family, and I guess that was her anchor. I didn’t have that, so maybe that’s why the disappointment lingered longer for me.
Sitting in my sister’s living room that day, I was offered tea. We talked about their travels, my travels, my recent marriage, their recent grandchildren. We laughed about our commonalities and differences. About an hour went by when I got up to leave.
We all hugged goodbye. As I walked out onto the street, my sister stood in the doorway and watched me. When I looked back, she smiled and said, “It was good to see you.”
As I drove home, I felt a combination of relief and melancholy. I couldn’t figure out why.
Visiting them was so easy and so pleasant that it made me feel sad about the loss of it. Maybe doing this made me wonder if all of the years of estrangement needed to happen: That in one gesture offered by either of us, we could have closed the chasm and kept it closed, if we kept on trying. Or maybe because I wondered if, despite the warmth we just shared, it would go back to the way it was – again.
It feels like we’re running out of time. The years are flying by. That’s why I had to take that chance. I hope what I did that day closed the chasm even for a few seconds, because I never wanted it.
I.S. Mindak lives in Ottawa.