My adult niece is staying with us for a few days as she’s in Wellington for work.
She is a lovely person, like a younger, better looking, smarter and well adjusted version of me.
This morning she asked me for the first time ever what her dad, my brother, was like when we were kids. I prevaricated, of course. In fact it was even worse – I just blushed, said “Ummm” and stared off into the distance until she changed the subject.
The truth is, he was a terrible bully growing up. He was the oldest, and made the rest of our lives a misery with physical and psychological torment. It’s no exaggeration to say we all still bear the mental scars from it, even so many decades later. Bizarrely, he himself apparently denies it, and has his own version of reality where I gather he thinks he was the victim, somehow.
I don’t know why my niece is asking about this now, and what would be gained by telling her the truth. On the other hand, doesn’t she deserve to know why he’s still on the outer, even after all these years? It must seem to her and her brother that the rest of us aunts and uncles are just overreacting, bearing a grudge, and that we just need to grow up and get over it. This is complicated by his treatment of our mother in more recent years, which I won’t go into.
I suppose families are complicated things, and it’s not unusual that there be some murky stuff in the past. The best part is that he turned out – from the outside at least – to be a really doting father.
I think I’m just going to let discretion be the better part of valour – and keep my silence. Or am I just trying to make excuses for being a coward?
(If there’s family outcry about this post I may have to delete it later, so enjoy it while you can!)