Aliens

I've been thinking about aliens.

Little green men with phase guns and black, piercing eyes. Flying saucers beaming bovines and seasonal field workers into their perfectly round and stainless armatures. Touching down on our freshly cut lawns, peering into our unseen places — our organs and psyches — uncovering spools of pain and knowledge.

Have you ever stared up and wondered? Have you ever thought about them?

When I think of aliens, the images and stories that come to mind do not come from me, but from movies. Hollywood’s influence on the word is so impressive, at least in my experience, that I struggle to imagine an alien that was not born on some film set.

Growing up I was obsessed with alien movies. Instead of Disney films, I watched The Thing, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Alien, Aliens, Alien 3. The promise of a creature that could travel across the twinkling black fabric of outer space and visit Earth, of all rocks in the galaxy, was as terrific as it was horrifying. I couldn’t look away.

But there was one alien I’ll never forget. A real close encounter. If I’m being honest, the experience rests at the centre of who I am.

This was the winter of 1990. It snowed a lot that year. Toronto was in the middle of a housing boom, and there were so many new homeowners that Canadian Tire sold out of snow shovels. Dad wasn’t home, he travelled a lot, so mom and I snuggled up on the couch in front of our 13” Sharp Linytron TV set and watched ET the Extra-Terrestrial.

I wanted more than anything to see this movie. The theatrical release happened some 7 years prior, before I was born, and in the early 90s, it could take almost a decade for a film to arrive in your home entertainment system. Ever since I understood the words my aunts and uncles spoke to me, I heard them quote the film.

ET phone home, they croaked.

E-L-L-I-O-T-T!

Finally, Universal Pictures released the film on this new home-based format, the VHS. The tape had a green guard panel; I got a trip out of that. I couldn’t stop myself from opening it to expose the brown-black celluloid beneath.

I watched the film, and that night I had a dream.

I wake up to a tap tap tap on my shoulder. I turn around and there he is, ET, smiling beside my bed. Big teeth and wet, leathery skin. I scream so loud I pop a blood vessel in my eye, and mom rushes into the room ready to fight off a child kidnapper. In the morning, I wrapped the VHS in a blanket and begged her to send it away.

It’s a silly, somewhat comical dream. But the experience has mixed into my personal history like cinnamon folded into dough. Mom retells the story at family gatherings, and as a 36 year old man, I still can’t sleep with my back to the door.

Not only is it the first dream I can remember, it’s also my first memory. Watching the movie with mom, her putting me to bed, and waking up in the night with the pale street light across my bedroom wall. An alien smiling beside me. He reaches out with a long, slender finger…

If my memories were parts of a spaceship, this one would be the airlock. There’s nothing before it, just the vacuum of space.

To this day I can recall moments from the film as if they were my childhood. It was the first VHS I saw at home after all and the fuzzy-warm images have burned into my mind.

But maybe the real reason the movie stuck with me is because it was my childhood. Elliott’s relationship with the alien mirrored a journey I would soon embark upon. Because a few months after my late-night confrontation with ET, Kelly landed on Earth.

I must have known he was arriving soon. Snuggled up on the couch, watching the movie, mom would have been six or seven months pregnant. But in alien films, the main character never sees what’s coming - I bet it was the same for me.

Kelly reached planet Earth in May 1990. I came down with chickenpox the week he was born, and as the story goes, the doctor recommended I isolate from him until it cleared up. Chickenpox can kill a newborn. So for his first two or three weeks, Kelly had mom all to himself while I stayed at my grandparents’ place in Rexdale, a few towns over.

I don’t remember those early months, no matter how hard I try. All I have is ET. I suppose to a four-year-old boy, it could have felt like I discovered a lost alien. I befriended him and watched as he made a mess of my bedroom or tried eating my socks. It’s not such an outrageous idea.

What I can recall is the suspicion that he seemed perfect. Where did he come from? Why did he choose us? Suddenly I had to share my toys and the affection of my parents with a being sent from a different galaxy. I struggled with jealousy - something other firstborns I know have mentioned.

When I start to move around the spaceship, looking out the portholes and peering into my earliest memories, what I encounter more than anything is Kelly’s love. The boy’s heart practically shined through his clothing.

Kelly, myself, and our dog named Sorry.

Thinking about it now, if there is one word Hollywood has influenced as much as aliens, it’s got to be love, right? Most movies offer a pasteurized version of what I experienced with Kelly. Real love is something completely different.

The root of love stems from, of all sources, the word permission. Love cannot affect me if I refuse to open my heart and let it in. But what is it that I let in? Like an alien, it’s strange and otherworldly. It does not communicate in language or mathematics and the only way to know how much it has affected me is by what I feel.

I was born with my parents’ love; Kelly’s love was first contact. Like Elliott, I was terrified. My dad would set me aside sometimes and say, love your brother. What the hell does that mean? It’s an impossible ask. Suddenly, this alien destroyed or transformed everything I enjoyed.

Opening my door to a new visitor is not easy. Where do they go? How much of myself must I push aside to give them room? I’ve known brothers that are best friends and brothers that hate each other; I can’t speak to what makes a healthy sibling relationship. What I do know is that I closed some parts of myself as much as I let his love in.

It’s no use going through this spaceship and pointing out all the areas I’ve sealed shut, but there was this one time on the playground in elementary school I’ll never forget. Kelly ran up to me, tears running down his face, and pointed to this older kid, an eighth grader that smelled like processed cheese. I was afraid of him, nearly everyone was. Kelly asked me to help with this bully, and I turned my back and walked away.

Of course, there were times when I defended him when he was in trouble or made him laugh when he was sad. I know I accepted his love as best I could, but it’s the playground that I think about any time I wonder how Kelly is doing. We’ve never talked about that day. These days we rarely talk at all.

I’ve seen countless movies about aliens in weaponized spaceships or teeth the size of my shin. But where are the alien movies of being confronted with a creature that offers you a love that’s so complete and tender, you tremble and turn away?

My wife, years after we married, when we purchased our house, brought home a crate from her childhood that she dug up from her parents’ basement. It was dusty and had her name scribbled on the side. The first thing she pulled out was the Collector’s Edition DVD for ET the Extra-Terrestrial. I teared up holding it in my hands.

“I won it in sixth grade,” she said.

Still in its original packaging.

I could interpret this little moment as happenstance. A cute dimple in the story of our lives together. But a voice inside me can’t stop asking: why ET? She could have been awarded a handful of other films. Jurassic Park, Toy Story, Lion King. When she was in sixth grade, the biggest films of our childhood had DVD box sets.

Back in 1990, a few months before I met my little brother, ET visited me and I begged my mom to send the movie away. 30 years later, and my wife pulls out the DVD box set from a storage container.

“It’s the only thing I’ve ever won,” she said as I handed her back the cardboard box.

Standing in the laundry room, watching my wife place the movie on a shelf, as if it was an ordinary Hollywood picture, I realized that real aliens transcend logic and reason, time and space. That’s terrifying. Which is to say, when I encounter love, I must try and forgive myself if I end up closing a few doors instead of opening them.