In The Trenches

I had a long talk today with my sister about our family.  My lovely wife has been a consistent sounding board on these matters but she's on my side, a little more willing to pile on and find additional familial blemishes to prod.  My sponsor was helpful, too, but he was mostly good for general child-parent advice, lacking the intimacy that comes with actually being a family member.  My sister, however, was in the trenches with me.

She takes a much more nuanced view of all the happenings, believing that most people our age have some similar set of problems with people our parents' age.  Men were more restrained and distant, less involved with child-rearing, not of a mind to share emotions, while women took on the lion's share of the upbringing tasks, especially so because many of them didn't work outside the home.  This was a good reminder and a comforting one - it takes some of my specific Seaweed family bitches and makes them more global, more normal, mainstream.  My parents may be psychos to me but probably not to other adults from their generation.  I know that I sit back, amazed, at how involved parents are in their children's lives today - when I was growing your parents were your enemies, not your friends.  It's not right or wrong - it's how it is.  I'm sure there will be another quantum shift in the parent-child dynamic in another generation or two.

My sister was also astounded at some of the anecdotes about mom's fear-mongering.   Mom apparently either didn't treat my sister this way or - more likely - she had a constitution that was more easily able to brush off this behavior.  All of us have our bedevilments, things that bother us unduly while barely causing the needle to flicker on someone else's emotional pressure gauge.  I always laugh when people express alarm about the safety of some of the places I visit, pointing out that there were 5,500,000 automobile accidents in the US in 2017, killing over 33,000 people.  I remind them that the most dangerous part of my trip is always the drive to the airport but most of them wouldn't bat an eye at talking on a cell phone while driving 75 MPH on the freeway.  Still, they avoid these kinds of vacations while I don't pause for a moment.

I confirmed with her that she  never heard dad or any of my grandparents ever complain about sickness or injury, and dad wasn't particularly healthy, suffering with arthritis and enduring a detached retina, all on top of taking an errant baseball bat in the mouth during a softball game.  The bat knocked out half of his teeth and broke his cheek, his eye socket, and the roof of his mouth.

Never a peep.  About injury or sickness both.  Amazing.  Maybe mom did enough moaning for all of them.  We speculated as to whether my grandmama passed on some of the worry gene to my mother just as we wonder if my alcoholic grandfather poured some alcoholic poison on my dad's upbringing.  And I have to play the organized religion card again - all of us heard a lot of dire warnings thundering down from a lot of raised pulpits.

Why did I absorb all this?  My folks had other shortcomings that I avoided.  My sister is of the opinion that, if you're the oldest child then you're built to walk around with the weight of the world on your shoulders.  And, you know, mom lived with an active alcoholic so it's not unreasonable to assume that this behavior may have caused her to fear a loss of income or stability in home life.

And I know that hypochondria can be a compelling character defect -  lllness is a great way to get attention.  It's like crying.  People perk up and look your way if they think you're dying from toenail cancer. 

I'm under the impression that a lot of people my age grew up with a distant father and an overprotective mother.  I bet this was pretty common.

I'm going to start running out of things to say here.  I'm getting tired blaming someone else for my defects.