Are you out there, Rod?

My brother, Rod Schneider, has been missing for more than ten years. Tomorrow is his birthday. In the hope that he might happen upon this blog in a googling moment, I am posting something I wrote for him:

Why did you disappear, Rod? When did the rot set in to break the bonds between us? Back in 1980 when you left your first wife and destroyed the business you built with my first husband? Or five years later when you came to France, outraged my second man’s family and ruined my thirtieth birthday party? Who felt worse each time? You, with guilt? Or me, with a sense of betrayal?

I thought we were back on track in 1995 when I visited you in Germany. You were my astonishing baby brother again – intense, moody and occasionally explosive, but as interesting and insightful as you had ever been. I thought we had forgiven each other’s mad moments. Wounded children become wounded adults, don’t they? We had some excuses.

And there we were – me forty, you thirty-eight – both successful and resolved in our own ways. I was a senior public affairs manager in a big corporation. I had two kids and a cute place in an inner Sydney suburb that was gentrifying by the day. Sadly, I didn’t have the relationship side sorted, but you did. You seemed happy with your second wife, Friedericke, and she seemed far warmer than when you’d brought her to my thirtieth birthday debacle. You had made your apartment in an obscure German village gorgeous and gadgety. And you didn’t give a damn that she made the money while you dabbled in astrology, soap-making and software development. We had forged ahead in opposite directions and in some ways we had both reached our peak.

You had always been handsome, in the sort of boy-poet way that made women want to mother and brother you. But now you had matured into a striking wizard of a man – so much so that I didn’t recognise you when you met me at Frankfurt airport. After ten years, I still had a vivid picture of you in my mind, but I hadn’t added long hair and subtracted five kilos. I was standing there waiting for you when a complete stranger took my breath away. He looked like Daniel Day Lewis in The Last of the Mohicans – tall, bony and beautiful with streaming hair of coal, copper and silver. Only as he came close did I see those blue eyes burning into mine and realise that it was you. No one looking on would have imagined I was your sister – I was so different in colouring and tone. My hair was as long but completely copper, my face was girly rather than gaunt, and my manner was as light and airy as yours was intensely focused. Indeed, you looked more like Friedericke’s sister. The snowy-haired Christmas tree angel I remembered from ten years before now mirrored your new starved, scrubbed and androgynous style.

Purposefully, you led us to the train station below the airport and we bought tickets for Saarbrucken. Once we were on our way, you relaxed and we started bouncing ideas off each other the way we used to as teenagers. It was my first time in Germany and I was struck by the brutal edge to the architecture, signage and systems I saw around us. Pointing to a chocolate billboard advertisement, you said that the slogan “quadratisch, praktisch, gut” meant "square, practical, good”. “Where else in the world would people sell chocolate that way?” you asked with a mixture of contempt and admiration. At Saarbrucken, we caught a bus to Lummershied and then walked to your apartment in the basement of a large house. It was decorated beautifully and imaginatively, just as I had expected, but I sensed something dark and forbidding about the place. Your in-laws owned it and lived above you, but there was little contact and even less warmth between the two households. You didn’t introduce me to them for days and only spoke of them in the harshest of terms. But I wasn’t particularly concerned at the time. I shiver now when I think back to the call you made to our sister before you vanished, claiming one of Friedericke’s relatives was threatening your lives.

I presumed you were just being melodramatic. We’re both inclined that way, you have to admit. And it’s perfectly understandable, given our manic genes and depressive upbringing. But you’ve been missing so long, I sometimes imagine that you really were in danger and perhaps the worst happened and you’re dead and no one found your body, or identified it, or knew we existed to inform us.

Deep down, though, I am certain you’re alive and you’ve just cut us off. Maybe you regret that rash decision but can’t bring yourself to reverse it. And that’s the problem – not knowing. For you, that’s probably the point. You want us to suffer. Back in 1995, you kept describing yourself as “cruel but fair”. Sure, it was a line straight out of Monty Python and there was a glint of the old Rod’s cutting wit in the way you used it, but you meant what you said. Nothing is more serious than a joke, is it?

That was one of the life observations we mulled over that cold, wet month of May 1995. For three days we were cooped up inside your apartment, unable to make the excursions you had planned for my visit. Instead you cooked delicious vegan meals, which was an extraordinary feat considering your long list of banned ingredients (meat, animal fats, eggs, dairy products) and your special quirks (like measuring everything to the nanogram and cutting back anything even remotely indulgent). When we ate, I was obliged to drink my wine alone because you never touched the stuff. I even had to buy a corkscrew because you saw no use for such a utensil. Nevertheless, we enjoyed ourselves. We played the occasional game of Scrabble or Five Hundred, but mostly we talked … and talked … and talked.

We discussed every aspect of art from graphic design to grand literature and we plunged into astrology, numerology and tarot to analyse personalities and relationships. I read your cards and you meditated on the natal charts of everyone in my worry basket. I was at a turning point – the classic mid-life crisis – and you were head-butt blunt in your advice. Cruel but fair, you kept on saying.

One comment in particular still haunts me. We talked about regrets. Do you remember? You asked me if I had any regrets and I said I didn’t. I felt I’d done the best I could at every point of my life and the mistakes I’d made were all part of the rich pattern of life. Without pain, how could anyone appreciate pleasure? You shook your head. For you, my answer meant I’d learned nothing and I was doomed to keep stumbling in the dark. My riposte was worthy of Sophocles, I thought back then. “That’s exactly the point!” I said. “I have learned valuable lessons from all of my mistakes. So why regret them? They’ve spurred positive change.”

After all this time, I understand the scornful look on your face when you heard this. I wasn’t facing up to my regrets back then, but I’ve more than made up for that since. I need to tell you about that. I need to talk to you adult to adult. I’ve finally grown up. Menopause has worked magic for me. I see things so much more clearly without the hormonal rages that screwed up my emotions and skewed my judgement.

More importantly, though, there is so much family news you should know. Mum is now living here in Melbourne. Our sister, Marilyn, had a stroke that fried the front part of her brain, but she seems happy and has remarried. There are new babies – Stephen’s and Carmina's daughter and son in Barcelona, Kate’s and Anna's son here in Melbourne. I’ve finally found a solid relationship. John and I have been together for more than eleven years now.

Who would have thought I could do it? Not you. You told me in 1995 that I seduced men with my femininity and then dismayed them with the full story – that I was a harpy, I suppose. You clearly disapproved of my taste in men and most likely how I played the game. They deserved everything I dished out, you said. Cruel as you were, I must admit you were pretty fair in your assessment. And strange as it may sound, I appreciated that.

I miss you, Rod. So do Mum and Marilyn. I can’t hunt you down again. When I tried that, I alienated you even more. So I am writing this. Perhaps you will think of us on your birthday.

This is what i want to tell you – you are more than blood. I would like you whether you were related or not. You have infuriating bad qualities. So do we all. You are intelligent, funny and soulful – the three qualities I demand of friends. I admire your inventiveness, your fine taste and your philosophical depth. I feel protective about you. I cannot like any man without comparing him to you. You were my first real friend. Where are you?