Relations

Relationships. What is the shape of your relationships? Why is it that everything is a relationship? I have a relationship. I have several. Apparently, I have a relationship with everybody. Is it ok if I don't? Can I step away? Can I not have relationships?

It's hard to keep up with all my relationships. I have a relationship with my parents, a relationship with MyEx, and according to Webster's, I even have a relationship with my proctologist. Well they didn't name him specifically, but they seemed to imply that relationships are inclusive.

"Hey Rob, show me your butt!"

"Can we just have a cup of coffee?"

One relational definition is "A connection." Yeah, sorry, that's not the term I choose to stick to that doctor.

Let's talk about other relationship definitions, shall we? How about, "behavior or feelings towards an other." That's my favorite. I think it's because it's a cause effect definition. It lets me pretend I have control over relationships. I mean, I do, but no more than fifty percent. The rest is up to God and whim of man, and those are two forces I still don't understand.

Did you know that you can break a relationship but you can't loose it? Yeah, it's like that toilet paper tail: when you leave the bathroom, it won't go away. The more you try to shake it free, the more people stare.

Some relationships work without any plausible explanation. There's my relationship with MyEx. It works. I don't know how; it's certainly not my overwhelming charm. Even separate, we have a relationship. I don't know if I'd call it healthy. If it were healthy, we'd still be married. Still, we mended what we could, and now we work together. We're like the brother and sister that were locked in a room without dinner until they could get along.

"I'm not tou-ching you!"

Now a few years later, and a lot leaner, we get along fine. That's better than some brothers and sisters. They'd rather starve.

That's another thing, you can starve a relationship, but even that won't kill it. I'm a brother. I have sisters--two. I also have a family. We're all still eating; just at separate tables. Family relationships are a kind of color coded deal a meal thing. I mean, I'm in various states of "connection" with all of them. Some are peas and carrots, others are just desserts. I don't choose favorites; they choose me. The rest of us swim around the same gene pool separated by our oil and water relationships.

That's the thing about the Pirate Queen. She tells me about her relationship with her family and it's all foreign. She calls her family frequently. When she was out here visiting me, she received four family calls.

Me? My family didn't call once. Oh Persephone voiced her concern, but everybody else stayed away.

"Rob, we're just making sure you're ok." Nope, not one peep or chocolate rabbit. That's not to bash on my family. I love them. We're not dysfunctional, we function quite well, we just do it from a great distance and rather quietly. It's a different dynamic.

One of my sisters hasn't called me in five years.

"Five years?" The Pirate Queen can't believe it. She just got off the phone from her second call with her mom.

"Yeah, why?"

"Are you not talking?"

"Well, I mean that is the technical definition, but I don't think it's anything intentional."

"Are you sure?"
"I don't know. We don't talk."

We don't. It's fine. It's weird if we do talk. That's why I've been creeped out lately. Last month, my sister started calling me weekly.

"Hey Rob, how are you doing?"

"Uhm, fine?"

That's a flux in the dynamic. Last time I had a flux in a dynamic, I got a divorce. Now this is my sister, I can't divorce her. Still, it's a scary feeling, like in the horror movies, when the svelte college dude with the "I'm a hero not a victim" smile (played by me, of course) looks over his shoulder to see an axe murderer tapping on the window.

"Hi! It's me. Might I borrow a cup of sugar?"

No my sister is not an axe murderer. I'd know. We don't talk, but we do tell each other everything. Still, a change in behavior means there's something I don't know. Like "why is there a change in behavior."

So today I did what all confused brothers do: I called mom.

"You're just being paranoid, Rob. Now go play with your sister." My mom doesn't read my blogs. She doesn't know that we don't play.

I have relationships with the people I play with too.

"You're lame!" That's a girl who plays games on Facebook. Our relationship is strained. "I'm just offering friendly advice," she said. I wasn't sure which part of "you're lame" was friendly advice, but the rest of the message was clear. I know where I stand in that relationship.

I think that's a rarity. Relationships are constantly in a six degree state of ebb and flow. We never know where we stand until our feet are buried under six feet of shifting sand. Life, people, events, everything changes, and changes the way we see things. When I was 10 Jenny Dane was the first girl to hit me with a jump rope, when I was 12 she was the first girl to dance with me.

The trick with relationships is to keep them open. Yeah sure, like my proctologist, they can whip around and bite you in the butt, but they can also bloom into something unexpected if you give them a chance. Sure it's risky and scary, but everything worthwhile is.

So what about my sister? I don't know. Five years of silence is a long time to just spring up and say 'hi" without motivation. But she is family and sometimes that's the risk you've got to take. Because one think I learned from my grandfathers funeral: good or bad, all relationships come to an end; the true shape of your relationship in that moment is shape you'll wear around your neck until the day you cross over yourself. I'm far from perfect in my relationships, but I'd like the shape of my relationships to be a heart.