Sisterhood, Interrupted

Online, going "no contact" is often seen as liberating, empowering. If only I felt that way.

- Elizabeth Weil

IN THE MIDDLE OF MY LIFE, I ran into my sister. We hadn't talked in two years. I'd like to report that we got into a huge fight. Or that we hugged and cried. Or that we picked up our conversation where we'd left it off and our story lines converged. But none of that happened. We just stood there last summer on Bernal Hill in San Francisco, where I walk every day with my dog and where the passage of time is marked by events as clunky as a fairy tale: the hill grasses turning green and then brown and then green again; the litters of coyote pups yelping under the same low bush on the east slope each spring. But where my relationship with my sister should have been was a sinkhole. She lives 30 minutes away, yet we'd fallen out of the plot of conflict and repair. As a result, we stood there on the paved, carless road with a great void between us.