I’m not particularly close with my brother. We have an age gap of six years, after all. I left for college when he was still in middle school, so he was an only child for most of his cognitively-conscious years. But I wasn’t entirely absent either. I helped him with his school projects, drove him to school when I visited home, reviewed his college apps, sat him down for a conversation about drinking before he started college and bought him his first suit for recruiting season. I can’t claim to be a particularly agreeable sister. Perhaps I was only a preoccupied one who’d appear mid-scene like an act of deus ex machina. From my perspective too, my memories with him play like an amateur stop-motion. Some segments flow coherently, especially through the times when I had the patience to pay attention. But then there are abrupt non-sequiturs, like when I came home for Christmas sophomore year and suddenly he towered head-and-shoulders over me.

The latest of these changes is more subtle: he’s started making small talk with me.

One weekend, I flew home to visit my parents; he happened to also be home on break. Over the dinner table, he asked me, “How was the flight?” “How do you like the Bay Area?” “Does your new place feel like home yet?” It was the kind of attention I’d expect from either a good-natured coworker I’d bump into at the watercooler or an aunt with whom I have distant childhood memories. The thought that he might have felt obligated to fill the silence — a silence which I would have otherwise thought comfortable — didn’t register until I prepared to go to bed.

“Wow,” I thought. “Did he just make small talk with me?”

Small talk is generally reserved for 1) people we expect to never see again, but must interact with in the interim, 2) people we hope to never see again, but must interact with in the interim and 3) people we just can’t seem to connect with, but must interact with in the interim. I hope I fall into the third category, because the first and second just seem too sad. There’s also a different kind of sadness that comes with recognizing when someone has learned to make small talk. It comes from a need to navigate a situation that’s otherwise uncomfortable when one feels like a round peg in a square hole. I wonder what fires he has honed his conversational craft in. He’s surprisingly good at it. 

But since when did we need to fill the space between us? Was it always uncomfortable? Or is it only uncomfortable now when our proportional age gap has shrunk? In the past, we could sit in silence, justified by the distance between our significantly different places in life. But now, he’s strategizing his career, juggling an over-committed schedule and learning how to network. Now our lives look quite similar. So what if what I considered small talk was actually him taking the initiative to reach out, now that the distant sister who was always too busy to visit home is no longer so distant?

Ironically, the very act of reaching out highlights the void between us, separated by time and space. It makes me think of all the ways I could have been a better sister. It makes me wonder how many times he struggled silently. It makes me question why I never checked in more regularly. But now, perhaps I’ll take a page from his book and ask. Perhaps the silence I thought was comfortable is actually holding us back now.