What a Gift

It's currently 4:47 p.m. I hear my brother's soft snores as he takes his evening nap, occasionally getting up to glare at me whenever he realises that I've switched the air-conditioning off yet again. I hear my mother's excitement as she tells her friend about her latest findings regarding prospective undergraduate programs for her daughter over the phone. I also hear my dad's news program blasting through the speakers of this cheap Bluetooth device he got a couple of years ago. It should be noted that ma, dad and I are all in separate rooms, doors shut. It should also be noted that I have my headphones on. Noise-cancelling, at that. As I sit here, writing a few words out only to erase them right after, I find myself thinking about how loud it is.  

It usually never is. 

It's been a solid seven years since all four of us were at the same place, same time, for a considerable duration. When it was just my mom and I, the house was always quiet. Eerily so. Funnily enough, the silence never bothered me. It was something I enjoyed, something I craved the more it ensued. 

I never kept in touch with my dad, the man who was living on his own and making do in his one-bedroom, cockroach-infested apartment on the other side of the world to provide for his family - to provide for me. I hate to think about how quarantining there must have been for him before he could come back here. Confined in this run-down room, surrounded by no one, self-isolating after having come into contact with a person who was infected. I was scared for him, but somehow even more scared to reach out to him. 

I never kept in touch with my brother while he was away at college because I always just assumed that he wouldn't find a conversation with me to be worth his time. I put him on a well-deserved pedestal and I was always intimidated to merely speak to him. Besides, he had his own circle of friends, of like-minded peers who stimulate him intellectually. He had much better things to do than indulge the sister he only knew as a spoilt brat. I admire him to a concerning degree and still, I didn't miss him. I didn't know what missing him was supposed to feel like.  

I never connected with my mother, the woman who taught herself English from a dictionary, the woman who spent 3 hours biking to a place back and forth just so she could use the computer there to practice the coding that would eventually land her a job in the U.S., the woman who was always less than seven feet away from me, but somehow always out of reach. I genuinely cannot believe that three years went by with us barely speaking, if at all. It was my fault; I didn't want to make conversation only for it to end up in a pointless screaming match. I simply never bothered. And it never bothered me. 

So yes, it's been silent for quite some time. A silence that's been disrupted now because of having to quarantine together, and it's thrown me off. It's got me thinking a lot about family, what family means to me, and where I stand with each of them. I haven't had a sense of family for a very long time and I was so used to it. Scarily used to it. Now that we're all here again, I don't know what to make of it.  

I don't know what to make of the fact that my brother is now my roommate again. I don't know what to make of our light hearted banter. Of our pun contests where we try to one-up each other with the most ridiculous jokes. Of the occasional board game - board games that I'd stored away, that collected dust because I had no one to play them with after you and didn't think I ever would. I don't know what to make of the times when we're up at the crack of dawn together after having stayed up all night working, watching the sunrise as he tells me about Rayleigh's scattering effect of light.  

I don't know what to make of the times he gets out of bed just to show me a meme on his phone. Of the times he compliments my keyboard playing even as he makes it a point to groan every time I plug it in. Of the times he helps me bake in the kitchen, telling me how good the brownie batter tastes as he tells me all about the selective enzymes used in the processing of cane sugar. Of the times he brags to his friends about my cinnamon spiced banana muffins when they're on a video call. I don't know what to make of the fantasy that 9-year-old me had conjured up detailing the ideal sibling relationship in the years they weren't speaking, coming true.  

I don’t know what to make of my dad being here. I don't know what to make of the matching t-shirts he has with my brother that I see every time I do the laundry. I don't know what to make of the actual dad jokes he makes. Of him being there to make me a cup of ginger tea without me asking. Of him walking into my room for absolutely no reason, inspecting it for god knows what, and walking out with a smirk? I don't know what to make of our conversations at 8 a.m. - my mom, my dad, and I sitting around the dining table discussing colleges. I've only seen dining tables being used as a place for familial end-of-the-day conversations in movies. It's bizarre that it's now not just a thing of fiction. It's bizarre that I now have memories associated with an ugly tablecloth. 

I don't know what to make of my mom and I joking around a bit - still walking on eggshells around each other, still fighting and crying and stressing - but also, joking around.  

You know that I cannot wait to deal with my family issues in extensive therapy when I can afford it, but even with all the tears and the pain and the sorrow, this hasn't been so bad. I'm still very guarded and closed off. I still can't quite open up (not that there really is anything for me to open up about, you know?) because I have a lot of unresolved - maybe misguided - anger and heartache that I don't quite want to deal with. I'll never be able to get closure (of what, I'm not so sure myself) and I'm slowly coming to terms with the fact, but this hasn't been so bad. 

Having this experience during lockdown has been quite the ride though - one minute I'm sitting at this magical dining table thinking about how amazing it is that we're actually having a conversation, and the next I'm tearing up out of rage (I cry when I'm angry) at how they made me feel like I was the devil child. I was a kid, and they shamed me for it. I never meant for anything to happen. I certainly never meant for everything to happen. I was a kid.  

I think it's reasonable though - my anger, my gratitude, all of it. Maybe that's what family is - gaslighting and gaiety all wrapped up in one toxic present.  

What a gift.