This past weekend, my little sister was married. The ceremony was very nice, and the locale was fantastic, but I arrived at the wedding with more than a little bit of trepidation in my heart.
You see, she is not my biological sister. She is my step-sister, her father marrying my mother about a decade and a half ago. We had a fantastic, supportive family, and I have many, many memories of our joyful times together. That all changed when my mother died.
It was incredibly traumatic, and it tore my family apart in the most complete manner imaginable. I’ve not spoken to my stepfather since a fight not long after. I’ve gone so far as refusing birthday gifts from him to my children. We’ve not been in the same town at the same time since that fight. It was, in short, a doozy.
Until this past weekend. Obviously, he would attend my little sister’s wedding. Obviously, I would attend my little sister’s wedding. I decided early on that I wouldn’t try to instigate a fight, and I wouldn’t bring up old grievances. I didn’t want to blemish my little sister’s memories of her wedding in any way.
We gave each other space, and lots of it, for several hours. Then my daughter, all 24 pounds of her, decided that there was a new person that she wanted to say hello to, and she did it with enthusiasm. She ran up to him, legs pumping, and proceeded to fawn over him for several hours. He and I sat in some Adirondack chairs, overlooking a sloping hill that leads down to the valley underneath Killington resort, and talked like men do. Which is to say that we didn’t say much. We spoke about my two children, A and M. We spoke about cars and their repairs. We spoke about the alcohol we were drinking. We spoke about the weather on the little bluff we were sitting on. We spoke about very little, but everything we spoke about was bucolic and nice. We spoke, quietly, slowly, and often without actual speech, until the sun went down, and long after.
The next morning, we had breakfast together as a family. Both of my sisters and their families. My family. And my step father, a man that I spent so many years hating that I had forgotten how good it was to talk to him.
Here’s to you, Papa. It’s good to talk to you.