My Family is Strange: an outsider's perspective
By not going home for Thanksgiving (mom, I hope you've forgiven me), I got to enjoy not one, but three, T-day dinners with assorted friends and friends' families. Everyone makes excuses for their families, I've noticed. I've also noticed that everyone's family is their own, unique brand of crazy. In every case, that crazy is lovable. The sort of madness that, as a daughter, drives me to fits but is oh-so-delightful to witness as an outsider.
There are fights, there is the tipsy auntie, there are cat hairs in the mashed potatoes. Dad retreating to the sofa halfway through dinner, awkward conversations with strangers, children picking their noses before grabbing at the olive tray. Teasing and back-talk. Grace, when even my atheist self feels weepy and soulful (or maybe that was the booze). The displaced feeling that 400 miles away my own family was doing this without me.
I enjoy other people's families in a way that makes me appreciate my own more. By being an observer, not an actor, there's all of the fun and none of the stress. I appreciate having so many loving friends who bring me into their fold and treat me like their flesh and blood.
I tend to loathe the holidays, having to put on a good face and act sentimental. This year, here's hoping the acting won't be necessary.
There are fights, there is the tipsy auntie, there are cat hairs in the mashed potatoes. Dad retreating to the sofa halfway through dinner, awkward conversations with strangers, children picking their noses before grabbing at the olive tray. Teasing and back-talk. Grace, when even my atheist self feels weepy and soulful (or maybe that was the booze). The displaced feeling that 400 miles away my own family was doing this without me.
I enjoy other people's families in a way that makes me appreciate my own more. By being an observer, not an actor, there's all of the fun and none of the stress. I appreciate having so many loving friends who bring me into their fold and treat me like their flesh and blood.
I tend to loathe the holidays, having to put on a good face and act sentimental. This year, here's hoping the acting won't be necessary.
posted by Pru at
12:51 PM
2 Comments:
Dear Pru,
I do know how you feel. My own family gathered in numbers (about fifteen relatives, all told) and I was absent from the affair. Instead, I was feted by Andy Sibilla's family - have you met him? He was the one with the good sense to marry Leslie.
So here's to adulthood, and entangling alliances with friends and their families. May our own families not disown us.
Love,
Beebot.
P.S.: Who the hell is Pru?
By
Anonymous, at 9:48 AM
Good point (about entangling alliances) - it isn't meant to be the way it always was (or something like that).
Pru is Prudence Danforth, my alter ego. For the record, Pru is not the superhero.
By
Pru, at 12:24 PM
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