Surprise

Well, the unthinkable is happening.  Well, more like the highly unlikely.

My brother, his wife, and three children are coming for a "visit" next Saturday.

This will be the first time I have seen them, spoken with them, or communicated with them at all in over three years.

I haven't seen my niece Jenna since she was 2, she is now 5.  I haven't seen my nephew Joshua since he was an infant, he is now 3.  I have never seen my youngest niece, Jordyn.

I haven't seen PJ and Michelle since my mother called me in Rochester, crying on a random streetcorner in Lowville, because my parents had gone to their house to try to work things out, and both PJ and Michelle said terrible, unforgivable things to them, and told them to get off of their property or they were going to call the police.  While my mother walked down unfamiliar streets to get away from the shouting, she called me crying because she thought my dad was going to give himself a heart attack.

I haven't seen PJ since both Gretchen and I sent him lengthy emails, because he and Michelle were screening their calls.  Emails to which we received no response, but convinced him that we were puppets of my mother's creation, and he wanted nothing more to do with us.

I have not seen him since my parents have made repeated efforts to repair the relationship: apologizing for things they've never done, making phone calls where they only get torn down or ridiculed, going to therapy to see if any of this made sense from an outsider's perspective, driving almost 2 hours for 45-minute visits in which they weren't offered food or drink, weren't allowed to touch the kids, and were not acknowledged by Michelle at all.

I have watched these last several years as my parents get their hopes up that maybe things might work out this time, only to have them dashed again and again and again.  I have watched how it has changed both of them, making them tense and emotional and argumentative.  Now that I'm home, I have waited out a number of arguments about PJ and Michelle from up in my bedroom, just like a little kid.

We have passed holiday after holiday as a family of 4.  While other people pass food around a giant family table, we're eating leftover turkey for 4 months.  I have received no acknowledgment from my brother and his family of any birthday, or holiday, or achievement, or life event.

So now they're coming.  For lunch.  And will likely stay an hour.  A very tense hour, with my father overjoyed, assuming everything is finally back to normal (as he always does), my mother trying way too hard to be nice and friendly and non-judgmental, which always comes off as horribly fake.

The variables in this situation are Gretchen and I.  We are not sure we will be in attendance.  No one ever thought this situation would arise.  We never thought we'd have the opportunity to see them again until one of my parents died, if then.  Now knowing that I have less than one week to emotionally prepare to have this entire section of "family" reenter my life is daunting.

I had hoped that by the next time I saw them, especially my brother, I would have accomplished so much that it would really make him regret missing out on all these years of my life.  But I haven't.  I have not done anything with my life in these last several years, other than screw it up even more.  The only thing I have accomplished in the last three years of my life is getting my driver's license, which as I've said repeatedly, is a laughably embarrassing achievement at age 25 (or 24, as it were).  I'm sure he'll be so impressed that I've gained 40 lbs, moved back in with my parents, have no social life, and work in customer service at a stamp company.  He's obviously really missed out on a lot.

And this, I think, is my biggest reservation about seeing him again.  Because as much as I talk a big game about being so angry at him, and never forgiving him, I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that he will show up on our doorstep on Saturday, and I will still see the PJ that watched an entire Celebrity Mole marathon with me, and taught me all the best about early-90s grunge rock, and couldn't watch as Gretchen and Leah and I rode the Skycoaster at Darien Lake.  He is still my big brother, and I still want him to be proud of me.  So in the same way that I avoid chatty phone calls, and ignore messages that friendly acquaintances write on my Facebook wall, and panic whenever I run into someone I know at Wal-Mart, I am terrified of being in a "getting-to-know-you" situation with him, where he will be asking all about my life, and I am so ashamed of the answers.

But I will be there, of course.  And not only because my parents would be disappointed if I wasn't, and because I don't want to stoop to his level of pettiness.  I will be there, because I am always the one to take the punches.  I go into situations like these, knowing I will get hurt, knowing they will just make the constant weight in my stomach a little heavier.  It is my naive disconnect with the real world, that makes me think everything will work out the way it should, when in fact everything has taught me otherwise.

So here I go, setting myself up to get kicked while I'm down, once again.  Except this time it's going to hurt even more.