Please Call Your Sister

A lamppost is a beautiful thing when it tells a story of love that won't give up.

A poster on a lamppost tells a story of love, loss and hope.

Someone found the message Derek’s sister taped to a lamppost. Someone thought of her inching through holiday traffic or on a packed train from the 'burbs, phone in hand to catch the text that never arrived.

Someone pictured her buttonholing strangers: “Have you seen this man? He’s my brother.” The strangers can’t help the woman with the desperate eyes. They have one more stocking stuffer to buy, the holiday table to set, not a minute to lose getting home. This time of year in Toronto, darkness falls before 5 and Christmas trees twinkle in windows that frame scenes of domestic puttering at kitchen islands. Chop, swig, stir. Those not looking for a brother are cooking up seasonal cheer.

Someone knows every lamppost in the neighborhood, as dog walkers always do. Derek’s sister chose a lamppost on the boundary between sleek rowhouses with designer wreaths and hideaways frequented by the down and out. The men slumped on benches in the closest park have been on their way down for a while.

Who is Derek? What kind of fury or funk sent him off to points unknown? Someone remembers being young in a family riven by unspeakable sorrows that taunted and festered around Christmas. “The most wonderful time of the year,” sings Andy Williams in a hit that’s been wafting through tinseled aisles since around the time Someone discovered Bob Dylan. Someone never bought the Andy Williams line. Where there is compulsive drinking, there will be more drinking. Where there is abuse, more insults and blows. Where there is anguish, a deeper chasm ready to swallow the anguished.

Someone is a Steve Martin fan. Long before Only Murders in the Building; before L.A. Story, All of Me and much other merriment; before the Grammy for Best Bluegrass Album and a slew of nominations for acting awards, there was a violent father whose beatings and rages drove Steve to cut himself off from the whole accursed family—a story he tells in a memoir, Born Standing Up. If there’s one joke in this book, Someone missed it. Steve Martin’s aim is not to make you laugh but to show you the twisted roots of all the art he’s ever made. He had an older sister who refused to be lost for good. Decades after he broke with the Martins, she called and said, “I want to know my brother.”

Someone’s annotated copy of Steve Martin’s truth-telling memoir.

Someone reads notices on lampposts for the stories between the lines. It’s an impulse that can get out of hand. Maybe Derek’s family is nothing like the Martins. Maybe they are all kind people, confused and worn down by trying to help a child who, for now, will not be helped. Someone remembers the blinkered perspective of youth, when every disappointment seemed indelible and primal.

Someone is astonished to be thankful for seventy years of disappointments, wrong turns and losses that slip like notes to self into the pockets of a life. What to treasure, what to let go. First among treasured things is the love of people doing their imperfect best, which most of the time is good enough.

As Steve Martin’s father lay dying, he told his son he wished he could cry.

At first I took this as a comment on his condition but am forever grateful that I pushed on. “What do you want to cry about?” I said.

“For all the love I received and couldn’t return.”

Someone’s favorite flower is the bindweed, a tough little plant designed by nature to thrive in hard places. A downtown sidewalk is more porous than it looks, with microscopic cracks that admit the roots of the bindweed. The roots push and expand until the concrete buckles. Up comes a pale flower the size of a violet. Someone disagrees with Robert Burns. Love is not a rose but a bindweed.

For love of Derek, his sister came to Toronto and looked for him—quite a few times, by the sound of things. Maybe he never saw her plea: “We love you, miss you and want you to come home.” Someone saw, though, and answered with what might be called a prayer, although Someone is not the praying kind. A burst of longing wafted into the air and floated like a daydream of a letter bound who knows where:

Dear Derek,

A passing stranger knows that you are greatly loved. Please call your sister.

Hopefully yours,

Someone

Is there a Derek in your family (maybe even you)? Has love ever sent you on a quest for a lost family member? Do you find this post mostly sad or mostly hopeful? I’d love to know. Your comments and stories are among the great pleasures of creating Amazement Seeker, so bring 'em on. I do my best to answer every one and always smile when I see you answering one another.