Family Arrangements

For some reason (perhaps it was all the wedding and marriage talk going on around here) I recently realized that I am the only person in my family to have (technically) gotten divorced.  My mother did leave my father when I was seven but never bothered to make it legal.  She had no intention of marrying again (and although she has had several long term relationships, she hasn't remarried to this date) and then he died nine years later.  This left her a widow, something she didn't realize until she started collecting social security many years later.  As luck would have it, by not filing for divorce she now has bigger monthly checks.

Neither of my grandparents divorced or separated (although one pair probably should have) and none of my sisters have gotten a divorce.  So currently, I stand alone (and hope I remain that way, of course).

Today I ran across these statistics on step-families.  It made me realize, all over again, that I don't have any step-family members.  I did have a step-son during my first marriage but since that marriage is dissolved the relationship no longer exists (legally or emotionally; he is also my age so it never felt like a stepmother-son relationship, more like an incredibly awkward and inappropriate sibling relationship).  Angel has two step-parents, a biological half-brother, an adopted half-brother, and a step-sister.  b, of course, has a step-son but no other step-relatives as his parents never divorced either.  However his brother has twice, so that must make up for something.  Pumpkin takes the cake.  She has an adopted father, step-mother, one biological half-sister, and six other siblings that have no biological ties to her but are some form of half-step-adopted sibling.  (No one outside of the family can actually keep track of them all).  Now she also has me and b as emotionally-adopted parents.*

Of course, as the data show, these arrangements are all fairly frequent these days and will probably continue to grow.  What I find strange is that my family-of-origin appears so conservative when it comes to family configurations.  It is not like I have some la-de-da happy childhood to thank for it. In fact one could say that we took the 'fun' right out of dysfunctional when it came to family togetherness. So what is missing from this equation?  Unmarried partnerships.  We've had several of those in my family.  I wonder where they get figured into the data.

A major problem with doing research with families (as I do) is figuring out how to define a family. This becomes even harder when you consider the impact of time, as families change frequently. We decide within our families who we consider to be a family member and even then we may not all agree.  I found it interesting that Pew made the connection with obligations.  I tend to see it the other way around.  Those I consider myself obligated to, those I have chosen to be responsible for and to allow to be responsible for me, are my family members.  Blood and legal documents seem so much less significant.

*Pumpkin called as I was finishing up this post to invite us to an engagement party with both her and BB's parents.  We started talking about the post and she asked where in-laws fit in (no surprise since in-laws are very much on her mind these days).  It was a good question but probably deserving of its own post. 

RBOC: Links Edition

• May has pretty much come and gone and I realize its been over a month since I've updated the blogosphere on the minutiae of my life.
• I've also noticed that my rate of posting this year is less than half of what I was doing last year. A while back I decided to use blogging as a reward for writing. That system never really got off the ground but I have been writing--academic writing that is--up a storm so there is just less time to blog. This is a good thing but I miss thinking in a bloggy way about my life.
• I have continued my Twitter experiment but find I use it more to follow than to tweet. I like to tweet but often get lost in other people's worlds and forget about my own.
• I'm using TweetDeck and can also follow Facebook friends.
• My Facebook friends are not as interesting as my Twitter friends.
• Personally I think Twitter is old news now that NIH is in the act.
• I've come to the conclusion that reward systems don't work well for me. I either get into the act of doing something and the doing is the reward itself or I just don't.
• I haven't gotten back into physical activity yet this summer--especially my core plans--but there is still time and hope.
• I have made some progress on my summer reading lists. I've read two of the fiction books, added and read a third, and have just started Always Coming Home by LeGuin. For the nonfiction I'm reading three of the books at once.
• You can keep up with the progress by joining me on GoodReads.
• I have a few Barnes & Noble giftcards and am looking forward to a day of shopping.
• Angel is home and working. There is much more to be said on that but I'll leave that for its own post.
• Termites are still swarming. It seems this can go on for 3 months after treatment. Unfortunately a colony seems to live in the attic directly above the bathroom. Termites in the tub--not so pleasant.
• Family news continues to be bad. There seems to be a cancer outbreak in both mine and b's families.
• The economy is hitting my family extremely hard. I find myself asking--where do people go when they are out of options?
• I'm working on grant #2. I need a full draft by Monday night so b and I can go camping for 2 days. The finished product needs to be routed by June 9th.
• We'd like to go back to the lake and spend two days paddling but b has just informed that it will be 90 degrees both days. Between the heat and the grant I may decide to stay inside.

Flat M

My niece, M, is in the first grade. Her class is doing a project based on the book Flat Stanley. Flat Stanley was run over by a steamroller and had a series of adventures, including one where he travels through the mail. Everyone in M's class had to make a flat version of themselves and mail it to a friend or relative that lived far away.


Flat M helped me bake cupcakes and peanut butter banana bread for my class

So I received Flat M a little over a month ago. I was supposed to take Flat M with me on various adventures and take pictures of her visit with us and then mail her back to M's class with letters and stories about her visit as well as information about where I live. It sounded like a cool project and I was happy to agree when my sister, Amy, asked if I'd play along. Unfortunately she arrived at the end of a busy semester so Flat M sat on my desk for longer than I'd like.


Flat M went camping with me, b, and Pupzilla

So my priority for this week is to put together the story of Flat M's visit and get it in the mail before school is over (half the class has been returned already and I know M must be getting anxious for her turn).


Flat M loved snuggling Pupzilla

My Week As A Western Movie

The Good

I'm teaching a practicum class with both graduate and undergraduate students in my field. As a class we've been planning a large event in the community. Students had to secure space, funds, contributions, and volunteers as well as handle food and decorations. They also had to advertise and recruit participants. As a group we coordinated the entire event through class meetings and Blackboard.

The event occurred today and it went off like a charm. My students, 11 amazing young women, were awesome. The participants enjoyed themselves, learned a few things, met new people, felt pampered and appreciated, and were extremely appreciative of the all the hard work that went into the event. My students felt like they did a good job, worked well as a team, got professional experience, and made a really great day for some women who don't often get special treatment.

I felt proud.

The Bad

A few nights ago one of my colleagues, an avid bike rider and crusader for bike safety, was hit by a car while riding home from the office. The young woman who hit him was text messaging while driving. He is in the hospital with multiple broken bones, including 5 vertabrae. He is definitely improving but it will be a long recovery process. He lives alone and his family lives in another part of the country. On top of all this, it seems his elderly mother has been in and out of the hospital for most of the week, which means his sisters cannot come and take care of him.

[A small piece of good from this event is seeing how much the entire community (department, school, university) are rallying around him and helping him through this tough time. It's feels good to belong to such a supportive group.]

The Ugly

My mother was visiting this entire week. She is never an easy woman and has some serious emotional issues. I noticed when she arrived that she was in one of her "funks," not depression but rather not taking care of herself and drinking more than normal. Towards the end of her visit she manipulated b into a full-scale blow-out fight. She is known for this type of behavior, often with her sons-in-law, but b doesn't really fight with anyone and they certainly have never fought before.

The fight was, of course, over something stupid and if you followed it, which I had no choice but to do, it didn't make much sense. It escalated quickly and got really really bad. In the nine years that I've known him I have never seen b so angry. At one point I couldn't take it any longer and I just lost it. I yelled at them to stop and started crying. (I'm not someone who cries very easily or frequently.) b stopped immediately and came over to comfort me. Boy, who was also witness to this ugliness, acted like the man he has become and firmly but gently told his inebriated grandmother to stop (because she wouldn't) and then took her outside to walk around the block. Afterwards I learned he made idle conversation to divert her attention and when she wanted to continue talking about the fight he told her she could do that the next day, when she was sober.

Afterwards we all went to bed but the house was tense for the rest of her visit. She apologized in the morning but everything she said made it obvious that she just doesn't get what she did. I know she doesn't realize the damage that she has caused to her relationship with all three of us. I've seen her do things like this my entire life but it was the first time b and Boy have really experienced it up close and personal.

[The small bit of good in this was seeing how my sweet, caring, anxious little boy has grown into a mature, sensitive, and tactful man. I often wonder where he came from and how I got lucky enough to be his mom. His behavior with her and his gallantry towards me that night were really quite impressive.]

b just called from work and asked me out on a date to our favorite date restaurant. I'm happy to put this week to bed and that it is ending on such a happy note.

Sisters

They are four of us; I'm the youngest. When we were very young we distributed the identities of the Fantastic Four. I don't know their names but my oldest sister was the guy who could fly and turn into fire, the second oldest was the guy who turned into rocks (very Hulk-like), my third sister was the only girl - who could become invisible and had a force field, and I was the guy who could stretch like rubber.

Later we took on the identities of the sisters in Little Women. My oldest sister was Meg and the second oldest was Jo. These fit in both birth order and personality. However I ended up being Beth, the one too good for this world who dies young (I was not-so-affectionately nicknamed "Little Miss Goody-Two Shoes" and was the child who came down with every illness and/or injury). My third sister, who is only 16 months older than me, was Amy, the youngest. Amy is the girly one, the artistic/creative one, the emotional and spoiled one.

I spoke to my sister, Amy, last night. She is in a world of pain. We've been raised to hide/deny pain in my family, so Amy is very busy. We talked for over an hour. Amy and I have lived together a good deal of our lives. We grew up sharing a room; we went to camp together; we shared an apartment (along with Boy's dad - my first husband) for several years; and we spent every Christmas Eve and Christmas Day together until we were in our 30's. Amy is a martial artist, like me, and we were in the same dojo for 17 years.

At one point last night she reminded me that years ago I had told her I imagined the two of us living together and traveling when we were old and our husbands were gone. She's thinking about this now and although her children are her life and she loves her husband she's good with the idea of ending up with a sister.

I've invited her to come visit for a long weekend. She needs the mental break. She said her family is "stymied" right now. I think some space could help her get unstuck so she and her family can move on. She had a lot of reasons why she couldn't come visit--money, the kids' schedule, logistics, etc. I told her that I had already spoken to Meg and Jo and we had a plan for every difficulty. She said it would take a lot of coordination, she felt bad she couldn't manage it on her own, but if we could make it work she love to come more than anything.

I told her we'd make it work.

A Bit More on Conversational Styles

At some point early in our marriage I realized that b's family, my in-laws, had a very different conversational style than what I grew up with. In trying to explain this to b I used the analogy of food. His family is all cocktails and hor d'oeuvres. The conversation flits from topic to topic and person to person with the primary motive being to entertain and be witty. He agreed but replied that conversation in my family is the main course--usually large and difficult to digest. This is quite true, my family will dive into a topic and chew it to pieces. Our primary motive is to (over)analyze and be intelligent. It helped me realize why I had such difficulty "fitting in" at his family gatherings. Every time I found a topic I could sink my teeth into it was gone and they were three topics ahead. It didn't offer any solutions but sometimes framing the problem is the best you're going to get.

Story Telling

Last night I spoke to 2ndSister about 3rdSister. 3rdSister is going through a BAAAAD time and when I say BAAAD time I mean the type of situation that takes you years and years to extract yourself from, even longer to recover from, and leaves permanent damage. We've all been seeing this coming for a long time and 3rdSister is finally ready to see it herself. But that's not really what I want to post about.

My talk with 2ndSister, as she conveyed the latest information and progress--if you can call it that--lasted 2 1/2 hours. Now that's not really all that unusual for us and these conversations used to occur on a fairly regular basis. However since I've moved away (1stSister, 2ndSister, and 3rdSister all live about an hour from each other in a place we like to call "UpNorth") my contact with all three sisters has dropped considerably.

After our lengthy discussion, in a move that can only be described as denial, I spent a lot of time thinking about how 2ndSister (and all of us really) talks. 2ndSister tells stories. Really she tells stories within stories within stories. A conversation with her with her can involve as many characters and subplots as a Tolstoy novel. She is also the Queen of foreshadowing. My own conversational storytelling gets mired down in details. I have a researcher's need for pinpoint accuracy, which can kill a good story.

My research for the past two years has focused on listening to women's lives and I've come to realize that some of us talk in stories and others do not. But no one, and I mean no one, rivals 2ndSister. I had the opportunity of transcribing an interview she did and was able to see, on the page, what I've experienced my whole life. My sister talks in novels. So last night I talked a novel with my sister. Unfortunately it was a tragedy.