Hidden Valley Road - Inside the Mind of an American Family - Robert Kolker Page 0,161

Lindsay noticed this most in her brothers whenever they were on the receiving end of any kindness. “Matt called me this morning with just simple, plain gratitude,” she said, shortly after she’d helped him with his groceries. “I wish I could tap into that.”

Responding to some gentle prodding, some of her well brothers began reaching out to the sick ones. Richard and Renée called and asked for their phone numbers. Lindsay planned to get Colorado College hockey season tickets for Matt—something Mark might want to take him to, since they once loved playing together. “Pretty much everyone avoids them like the plague. But if I very clearly and deliberately say, ‘Hey, can you take them out for, you know, whatever, coffee and a donut?’ They’ll do it.”

* * *

—

IT TOOK SIX months for the sisters to try bridging the gap. They started talking in January, after spending the holidays apart. At the end of a long face-to-face visit, Lindsay started to see things more clearly. “I found myself angry at everybody in my family for not helping me with my mom at the end,” Lindsay said. “And Margaret perceived my way of helping as not necessarily a good thing.”

Margaret, in turn, acknowledged that Lindsay was more capable of handling the family matters than she ever could have been. But a huge gulf remained between them.

They discussed Margaret’s inability to help with Mimi and how angry it made Lindsay. “I just can’t do it,” Margaret said. And Lindsay felt comfortable enough to say that her sister’s decision was not all right with her—that it made her, as she recalled later, “feel sad and frustrated and angry that I feel like I’m left with this whole bag.”

They talked a little about survivors of childhood trauma, and how they often continue to find people in their lives to victimize them, so they can continue to get help. Was Lindsay playing that role for Margaret now? Was Margaret for Lindsay?

At the end of the conversation, Lindsay posed a question to her sister: Were they willing to accept each other for who they were? Or were they going to continue down the path of thinking the other person was somehow damaged, and impossible to be close with?

After that visit, Lindsay decided that she needed to allow all of her siblings to do things their way, even as she did things her way. “It’s about everyone’s own journey,” Lindsay said, trying to find some distance of her own. “How they’re able to muddle through life and deal.”

From her family, Lindsay could see how we all have an amazing ability to shape our own reality, regardless of the facts. We can live our entire lives in a bubble and be quite comfortable. And there can be other realities that we refuse to acknowledge, but are every bit as real as our own. She was not thinking of her sick brothers now, but of everyone—all of them, including her mother, including herself.

“I could just act like I’m a multimillionaire like my brother Richard. Or I could move to Boise like John, or I could play classical guitar all day like Michael. It’s, like, we all just do. Just respecting that about each other. We all survived somehow. Everyone’s different way needs to be okay.”

Lindsay was getting closer, finally, to seeing how nature and nurture work together. Her mother had always insisted, defensively, that the illness was genetic, and in a way, Mimi was right. Biology is destiny, to a point; that can’t be denied. But Lindsay understood now how we are more than just our genes. We are, in some way, a product of the people who surround us—the people we’re forced to grow up with, and the people we choose to be with later.

Our relationships can destroy us, but they can change us, too, and restore us, and without us ever seeing it happen, they define us.

We are human because the people around us make us human.

DONALD

JOHN

MICHAEL

RICHARD

MARK

MATTHEW