Meeting family again

I’m currently in Burg (Spreewald) at JES, the German Esperanto youth organization’s New Year’s gathering. I should be blogging in Esperanto, but that’s another topic, and this is about my family, which is mostly English-speaking.

I alerted, several months ago, my dad and step-mother that I would be in Europe; I tried to make plans with them, and planning was procrastinated and procrastinated; radio silence followed radio silence. The only information I got was that they were probably going to be on their way back from the US and that it probably wasn’t going to work out. That’s about as usual, but at least I tried.

In the meantime, I also alerted friends in Brussels and London that I would be in the area and would like to see them as well. They were mostly responsive, and I’ve got dates in the books with people from the normal cast of characters. I’ve been looking forward to and excited about seeing those people again.

Then my step-mother finally informs me, just a couple days ago, when I was already in Germany, that in fact they did not go to the US and that it would be possible to see one another in some unspecified way. Then she sends me a window of dates exactly coinciding with the time I’m meant to be in Brussels and London; I responded asking whether she meant that I should come stay with them that whole weekend, or whether I should pick a time out of that for a single rendezvous. So far, no response.

So the dilemma is: it seems I’ll have to flake on one side or the other of the visits: I can’t be more than one place at a time, and traveling between places takes time. The horrifying thing is that I’d rather see my people in London and Brussels than the people in Switzerland.

The last time I saw my dad was for lunch in November of 2024; the last time I saw my step-mother and half-sisters was in the summer of 2022 for two days in Verona. I wasn’t even invited to stay at the same hotel as them. This is literally the “Cat’s in the Cradle” shit my dad promised me would never happen. Because, you know, I’ve made plans with friends in the meantime, and they’re so much more responsive and present in my life; and it’s hard to flake on people I know I’ll be seeing again much sooner and saw much more recently than my own pops and his new family. I don’t want to punish my half-sisters by being absent, but hey.

My mom used to get teary-eyed when she’d say that my half-sisters were the siblings I had, and that it was critical that I have a relationship with them. Her siblings were an important part of her life (what a bad sentence, but it’s not my mom’s story now), and she was never able to give me a sibling: it was hard enough for her to conceive me, and she tried another two years until finally at forty-two and three-quarters years old the medic told her to stop trying, that it wasn’t going to happen. She told me, multiple times, and stop me if you’ve heard this one before, that the Christmas morning of, it must have been 1999, she was lying on the floor in the living room sobbing because it finally struck her that she would never be able to give me another sibling (I don’t know why they didn’t just adopt, in fact: I never thought of it until this very moment); I toddled over to her curled up crying and said, “but mommy, it’s Christmas!” And from then on she accepted the way things were and did her best to take care of the one child she did have. So there’s a sense of duty to my mother that says I should take the opportunity to see my half-siblings, at least once in almost four years.

I didn’t think writing that would make me cry, but it did, a little bit. I don’t know what I’m going to do. Filial piety says that I should of course ditch my friends to see my family. But weighing the relationships based on their actual history says it doesn’t make any sense to prefer these people who seem not to give a fuck about me except for the fact that this man once was married to my mom and his sperm was used to inseminate her artificially, over a group who has consistently, since I’ve known them, gone out of their way to welcome me, stay in touch, take me in, with whom I am in regular contact and whom I regularly visit.

I’m not sure when they will get back to me: nobody answers the phone when I call; my dad will occasionally email me but almost never replies to my emails; my step-mother messages me by whatsapp but only on her own schedule. My step-sisters and I sometimes message over whatsapp, but we have nothing to say to one another, because we’re basically strangers. I know hardly anything about them and their lives, and we hardly ever spend time together. I used to go to their house in Fribourg more often, but I don’t know what changed: it seems as if after COVID there was never an option to visit, and that whenever I asked it was not a good time: everyone was too busy or jet-lagged or whatever.

I periodically look my dad up to see if I can find an obituary: not that I expect him to die any time soon, based on how long his parents lived and his general robust state of health, but I doubt that anyone would remember to inform me if he died. I know that I’m not one of the beneficiaries of his will, because he told that to my mom after their divorce and my mom told me: everything I was going to receive from him financially I’ve already received via my mother’s part in the separation, which is plenty, don’t get me wrong at all, but still: it seems as if the same attitude, that I got everything I was going to get from him when he and my mother separated, extends to his relationship with me before death.

I don’t want to go see them. That’s all it is. I have nothing to say to them. I don’t think they’ll approve of my traveling, or of my choice of studies, or of any of the career concepts I have. I don’t think they’ll be happy to see me, and I don’t think we’ll spend as much time together as I will alone going to and from them, wherever they want to meet. I’ve been looking forward to seeing the people I know well; I want to visit London to feel out whether I want to go forward with applying to education post-grad programs there. I don’t hold any illusions anymore that my being physically present on this side of the Atlantic will make any difference at all to how much I see of them.

But if I said, “in fact, those times don’t work, because I’ve already made other plans,” then I’m the bad guy, and I’m sure I’d never be invited to spend time with them again. I feel very alone, and I don’t know what to do. I’m just waiting for my step-mother to reply to me and clarify what’s to happen, and time’s running out: it’s a full day’s journey from me to them, more or less, so I need at least some advance warning of where to be and when. For the time being, there’s nothing else to do but wait, or message again, I guess, but that’s historically not been helpful.