#27 - Ode on Siblings
Some reflections from a trip with my brother and sister. A travelog.
A single dab of water
will pass through your body
Seven fold through your lifetime
Same as me
Bringing with it the wisdom
of a billion years
As it knots the thread of our stories
Braiding the memories of your being
into the open ancestry of our time.
You who are so very different than me
And the same in this very moment.
How lucky am I to share this
with you
- Ben Wang, 2024I’m in the UK right now with my two siblings to celebrate my brother’s milestone birthday. The original goal, or apex, of these days was to be watching, listening and dancing to the headlining 80’s synth pop band the Pet Shop Boys at the BBC Radio 2 Music Show in Preston. That part was amazing, a true delight, despite the nearly diluvial weather, which we could have easily predicted, given Northern England’s climate. But it was the minor interstitial banter, deeper rekindling of long standing connection, reflections and recollections of our youth (some of which we individually forgot) that provided the trip, form.
It had been nearly 30 years since we gathered, just the three, for these adventures. We had been in Chicago, when Alex was a summer college intern for Anderson Consulting, I a mere college frosh and Ev, still in high school. During that trip I admired that Alex was living on his own, even though it was in a sweltering studio apartment that we all crammed into. I also had tried to track down a signature from the Smashing Pumpkin’s Billy Corgan1, but instead nearly choked on a used Lee Press On nail I chewed in my mouth, after digging into the chicken salad at Boston Market. When I showed, the half masticated, glitter polish covered cosmetic plastic to the high school student manning the cash register, he offered me a free replacement serving of the dish. I politely declined and gagged some more.
That time was and this time in the UK is rather special. In the intervening decades we siblings coalesced around holidays, family visits, celebrations, mournings and all coming-and-going ons of life. But there were always parents, friends, partners, children that accompanied or we missed a sister or a brother. There were of course the oscillating distractions, jobs and other priorities that got in the way as well. Finding the opportunity to connect solely with siblings was elusive. And it felt as though sometimes it was only the three of us family contemporaries2, as we grew older, more well worn, that could reexamine and reframe our family experiences, dynamics, scars, stories and dreams.
The trip has been action packed and I have had little time to write, choosing rather to immerse in one another. It is time well spent; nourishing and enlightening in spite of the jet lag. So instead of delving into an article on the incredible set of interviews I conducted, societal contagion or the epistemology of information entropy, I thought I would share a few personal reflections from this trip.
We’re the ones with the accents here
We started the trip in London where we ate our way across different and diverse areas of town, for example, the posher parts of Mayfair (Bibi), the touristy sections of Southwark (Borough Market) and the immigrant story of Bethnal Green (E Pellicci). Alex felt at home discussing the intricacies of stitch, last and hand with the haberdasheries and bespoke tailors on Savile Row including Daisy Knatchbull’s the Deck, the first woman owned tailor on the street. Londoners were used to American tourists, shoppers and fashion mongers and we were one of many. We visited Duke’s Bar, where Ian Fleming, the author of the James Bond 007 books, was thought to have invented the vesper martini. We were sat in a room full of familiar American accents (southern, midwestern and southwestern, we brought the Southern Californian). The only other twang was of Italian, the native tongue of master martini maker Alessandro Palazzi and his apprentices.
This changed dramatically when we headed north to Manchester, a fun, walkable gritty, vintage, reborn, everyday city, loaded with culture, music, architecture and 4am inebriated singing in the streets. The people were unimaginably friendly; we had multiple long conversations with strangers on the train, with immediate invitations to join them for dinner. And while, to us, it seemed that a Northern England accent emerged, somehow we too became exotic. A random young man passing us, upon hearing our conversation, asked “Are you an American? I’ve never met a real life American, before.” At breakfast at Ev’s eponymously named cafe, the server took our order and asked “Are you from the US? What could you possibly be doing up in Manchester?” It was strange to be an object of attention, purely based on our vocal soundings.
This experience reminds of the malleability of perspective; anything can be out of the ordinary. We should remember that we can shape our attention to find beauty in the mundane, good in the flawed and connection in the distinct. In cancer research, we often talk of the concept of seed versus soil; a good soil can prevent the growth of a bad seed, as when our immune systems acts to immunologically reject the tumor, or vice versa. That we’re the foreigners, that we’re the ones with the accents is an acute, albeit fun, reminder of the powerful influence of environments, context and soil.
We are family! And we all have roles in them.
Sister Sledge was one of the performers at the show and ended with their wedding-favorite, “We Are Family”3. I know my siblings incredibly well and, at times, my useful model is to default to interacting with them, through my understanding of what their core personality and traits are, which I’ve built over decades of spending time with them.
Evelyn is the thoughtful one and the implementer; the idea for this trip solidified when she broached to me “We should do something for Alex’s birthday.” Then she followed up with him on whether he wanted to do this and what dates might work for all three of us. She set up the hotels and made sure that check-in/out times were synched. She ensures that we’re doing the things that each of us enjoy.
Alex is the maven, planner and leader; he knew what we should do, what he wanted us to experience and did all the research to set an itinerary for food, clothing and experiences. And then he made that happen.
I’m the quintessential second born; I tag along and try to bring energy through social interactions with strangers (although Alex seemed to catalyze many conversations with his knowledge of footie), ask lots of questions and stir the pot in our own discussions4. It was a hard endeavor with the jet lag.
It was incredibly easeful to travel together. We crushed into a single room, shared beds and adopted the same general flexibility: try new things, veer from our initial intentions, and possess an openness to the possibilities that stumbled our way. We enjoyed perambulating through the cities to acquaint with them, logging 15-25,000 steps each day. And we suffered in the rain in Preston; and all of three of us saw it for what it was, that miserable experiences often lead to the best stories. For now, one of those memories will have to be me changing into Ev’s extra small fleece, after my clothes were soaked, contorting myself shirtlessly amid a crowded beer tent, the only respite we had from the cold rain. I think our Northern England friends were aghast, but we created some indelible images.
The above captures the dynamic for the three of us. But I also have to remember that useful models are still wrong. I know the two of them have grown dramatically and that my understanding of them should be updated; Alex, ever the protective big brother, I’ve seen him wear less external armor of status as he continues to be a protective big brother to his own interior. Ev, who has had balance and success throughout her life, and holds herself to very high standards, is also more gentle with herself. Me too I think. Maybe some of that is age, or life, or just the protean journey of us continuing to become our authentic selves. Either way I have to remember to be curious about them, assume less, as they, we, continue to change and morph, even if those changes seem infinitesimal to me.
The precious little time together, so let’s make more of it
Why the Pet Shop Boys? Our interest in the Pet Shop Boys came during our time living in Germany as youth. Yanked away from the tranquility of growing up in Santa Monica and our friends in the late 1980s, we were air dropped into a German school, without an ounce of knowledge about the language in a foreign, cold and rainy Stuttgart for my dad’s year long sabbatical. We retreated to one another in our apartment and found solace watching the German equivalent of MTV5. There, the Pet Shop Boys’ Heart rotated heavily; for kids more familiar with Wagner and Brahms, their synth pop was novel, fun, catchy and even erudite. Shared challenges turning into fond memories indeed.
I have no doubt that this trip will be remembered 30 years from now too, should we be so lucky to have that time together. I suppose it is a more imminent and immanent challenge to ensure that it’s not a 30 years again before we get to spend this type of quality time with one another. I hope this experience, memory and feeling will continue to provide the impulse to accept these gathering opportunities more frequently.
And I ask you, whether it’s siblings, friends, parents, partners, children; all of us who, as Sister Sledge says, “we are family,” how are you going to ensure that you accept the chance to nurture these relationships? I’d love to hear your ideas and your stories.
Postscript - Summary of the Misery
I was obsessed with this band during these years
These are those that have watched each other stumble towards adulthood with the intimate, secretive knowledge of the family’s soil.
I confess I did not know who actually sang this song, but this is Alex’s forte; to hold deep, specific knowledge about an immensely broad range of topics. Don’t play pub trivia against this guy.
Alex and I had multiple discussions about our Rousseau vs. Hobbesian perspectives on the general nature of humanity. His “people are no good” perspective has forced me to think of a first principles argument for why people are fundamentally good. This will come later as a separate post.
The US equivalent back in the states, we didn’t have.
I love your openness, generosity of spirit and deep love. This is the sentence that encapsulates it for me “ I also have to remember that useful models are still wrong. I know the two of them have grown dramatically and that my understanding of them should be updated;”
So touching and sweet!