As Promised, A Little Bit About Siblinghood

As any NCHS graduate who has ever sent me an email can tell you, I am tied for the world’s worst keeper-in-toucher. The explanations I offer are these: 1) I don’t want to send back a thoughtless reply, and it takes me a while to find time to respond thoughtfully; 2) You don’t think I’m good at responding to former students? You should talk to my family.

I should probably realize that being a loser in terms of contacting my brother and sisters doesn’t mitigate my loserness in keeping in contact with anyone else, but whatev. The point of the post is supposed to be what a wonderful family weekend I had last weekend.

You see, Lebron, my sister Mary Katherine, the firstborn, is best among all of us at keeping the family ties tied. It was interesting how all of our siblingness was funneled into one place last Saturday. We went on our annual pilgrimage to Plymouth, Massachusetts (if you didn’t chuckle at that, Lebron, read it again) to visit Mary Katherine’s family. We had rejected other weekend visits because some combination of Caitlin, Conor and Brendan wouldn’t be around to hang with us. This is Exhibit A of Mary Katherine’s nomination for Family Keeper Together of the Year: her children – one college graduate, one college student, and one high school senior – actually want to make time to see their New York relatives and spend time with a fifth grader and a second grader. This, to me, is no small thing.

So the plan was this: we’ll get up there late Friday, hang out by the pool, and on Saturday we’ll go on a harbor cruise (a test to see if the girls will have the tolerance for a whale watching cruise when we go to the Cape), jet ski, do more pool hanging and have a clambake-ish dinner. For the jet-skiing part of the program, my sister Maureen came up from Providence so that Gaby could join the fun. We get to the pier – my two sisters, Uncle Jimmy, Conor, the three younger girls and me – and find that we’re limited to the two jet skis we’d reserved. So Jimmy and Conor pilot the jet skis and the three girls get dispersed. I drop out, and head over to the deck bar at the Cabby Shack to watch over the harbor and have a couple of beers.

Of my siblings, Maureen is the one I speak with the least, not for any discernible reason, but just because that’s the way it is. As much of a loudmouth as I can be, I am a horrible initiator of conversation with my family and old friends. I am not the type of guy to pick up the phone to say hi, talk about my kids and then admit that I have nothing new going on in my life. Of course, I think lots of people would say, “Nothing’s new” when they don’t have a reason to call someone, but that plenty of News could be drawn out with minimal prodding. That’s why it was particularly nice to have a couple of Bud Light Limes with my two older sisters. Yes, Lebron, I was drinking Bud Light Lime, and not only that, but I really liked them. Yes, to me, a Bud Light product tasted good.

The even better part was that Maureen and Gaby didn’t boogie soon after jet-skiing; they went back to the house and hung around for quite a few hours. During that time, my brother Dan was sending texts to Mary Katherine updating her on the status of his bicycle ride in the Connecticut Challenge, a fundraiser for the American Cancer Society. He was riding for one of his friends and for Uncle Jimmy, who is eligible for the Survivor Walk that launches any Relay for Life event. So by 5:00, everyone is accounted for in the family hub except for younger sister Christine.

Well, Kate must have intuited her absence, because for some reason, she gets hold of my cell phone and calls Aunt Christine. We were only able to speak for a moment because Christine was headed for a high school reunion with all 37 or so of her classmates, but the point is that she was, in fact, present on Mary Katherine’s deck that afternoon.

It is a wonderful thing to have normal siblings, especially if they don’t give you shit about appearing aloof or self-centered. A body just has to wonder how far out of touch he would be, though, if it weren’t for his sister Mary Katherine.

Maybe, Lebron, a little more attention to your family would keep you out of those embarrassing Las Vegas situations with reporters who are pretty scummy themselves and never actually identify themselves as reporters. Peace.