Do you want to get fat? Because you already are.

My big sister Timber is blunt. I don’t know where she gets it. The rest of our nuclear family thrives on passivity while Timber enjoys engaging in verbal vitriol. She has no problem telling Daddy he’s gotten fat. The other day Timber asked Daddy if he would like to join her for a walk.

“Nope!” he answered.

“You need to exercise. You’ve gotten fat.”

Daddy lifted his iPad over his head, slammed it on the floor and screamed, “THAT’S BULLSHIT!”

I wonder if Daddy only remembers the 50-pound-lighter version of himself. Perhaps Daddy’s short-term memory loss explains his daily shock to discover his pants no longer fit. Timber’s relentless reminders even can’t permeate the tangles in his brain.

“Do you want to get fat? Because you already are,” she noted the other day when Daddy refused to accompany Mother to the gym.

Timber lived with Ryan and me for the entire month of April while completing a psychiatry clinical rotation as part of her Master of Physician Assistant degree. She traveled to three different hospitals over the course of four weeks and observed both support groups and one-on-one therapy sessions for people recovering from addictions or psychiatric episodes.

Every evening she brought home new information that could be applied to my own set of mental problems.

“Today the group took a quiz to determine whether they exhibit passive or aggressive behavior,” Timber began, handing me a blank worksheet. “I would like to think that I am assertive.”

“I know. You’re flawless,” I squinted.

“Take the quiz. I want to know how you score.”

“Whatever, you know you’re aggressive.”

The next night Timber staged an intervention of sorts with Ryan and me.

“Y’all take a cab when you’ve been drinking, right?” she asked with her arms crossed, blocking the TV.

“Yeah. Most of the time,” Ryan answered.

“People often are more intoxicated than they realize, and drive when they shouldn’t be operating a vehicle,” she continued.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” I moaned, swatting her away from the latest episode of Wives with Knives on the Investigation Discovery channel.

The following Saturday I woke up with scabs on my knee and hand, unaware of their origin.

“That’s a sign of drunkenness,” Timber blurted from the corner while sipping tea.

“Whatever, I remember now. I fell on a fountain. So there!”

“I really want you to go to WHC* for your eating disorder,” Timber notified me another night, forcing me to accept one of the counselor’s cards.

“I don’t have an eating disorder anymore. I eat!” I huffed.

“You have an unhealthy image of your body.”

“Thank you so much for your daily critique” became my mechanical response to Timber’s nightly intrusions.

Around week two I started making fun of Timber’s lectures. “A schizophrenic patient at the clinic really reminded me of you today… I met a meth addict with a personality very similar to yours this morning…” I mocked her.

“Bobbin,” Timber sighed. “You act as though this experience didn’t cause me to engage in any self-reflection at all.

“Ha! So you aren’t perfect!! ! ! !” I stomped.

*Facility acronym has been changed.

***

Last week I ate lunch with a friend whose father recently passed away. She vividly described her father during his last days (uncomfortable and solely concerned with water and food) and noted she doesn’t want to remember him that way. It must be hard not to cling to those final images of our loved ones.

If Daddy wakes up every morning believing he’s 50 pounds lighter and a few years younger, I wonder if that mode of thinking also applies to Timber and me — those years before we started building our own families and lives. I can’t blame him for running on a treadmill time machine: physically present but mentally stuck in the past. For Daddy those were happier days.