Thoughts on family
Jul. 7th, 2019 02:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
roselightfairyI’ve been spending a lovely long weekend with my family involving a great deal of bodily pummeling (dancing, swimming, sunburn, floating the river and getting knocked off my inner tube in the rapids, slicing open my finger washing a knife) that I hope will make me feel a little more refreshed when I get back to my library desk job.
My family is the kind of delightful chaos that is river floating: some periods of lovely calm and chatting, but always carried along by an unstoppable current of activity and laughter, and when the rapids rise, you just kind of have to plunge forward into it and navigate as best you can, and let the loud laughter and heckling and stupid jokes carry you forward. It’s an environment I know how to navigate because I’ve grown up in it, and one driven by love, but it can definitely be overwhelming...
...especially when you throw my stepmom, who is extremely uncomfortable in situations she does not control, and the second wife of a relative, into the mix. Sometimes her discomfort, or everyone else’s discomfort as she tries to forcibly yank the river into a shape she prefers, is so palpable that it feels like grinding teeth.
She has also, today, assumed the exact attitude and mannerisms of Jan from the “Dinner Party” episode of the Office (pre meltdown)—including fake laughter while telling a “cute” (but meant to be shaming) story about my dad, and it makes me extremely uncomfortable.
She’s told me that I’m not allowed to write about her, but internally I’m storing up a veritable vault of memory and anecdote, ready to be unleashed someday on some unsuspecting public. I suppose if nothing else, I have that.
My family is the kind of delightful chaos that is river floating: some periods of lovely calm and chatting, but always carried along by an unstoppable current of activity and laughter, and when the rapids rise, you just kind of have to plunge forward into it and navigate as best you can, and let the loud laughter and heckling and stupid jokes carry you forward. It’s an environment I know how to navigate because I’ve grown up in it, and one driven by love, but it can definitely be overwhelming...
...especially when you throw my stepmom, who is extremely uncomfortable in situations she does not control, and the second wife of a relative, into the mix. Sometimes her discomfort, or everyone else’s discomfort as she tries to forcibly yank the river into a shape she prefers, is so palpable that it feels like grinding teeth.
She has also, today, assumed the exact attitude and mannerisms of Jan from the “Dinner Party” episode of the Office (pre meltdown)—including fake laughter while telling a “cute” (but meant to be shaming) story about my dad, and it makes me extremely uncomfortable.
She’s told me that I’m not allowed to write about her, but internally I’m storing up a veritable vault of memory and anecdote, ready to be unleashed someday on some unsuspecting public. I suppose if nothing else, I have that.
