Reflections on family relationships and acceptance

My parents were here and I have been doing a million things. I'm so tired that I'm a little bit emotionally flat.

Physically: I've been walking around, but I don't feel very confident to do more than go from my car to a cafe table. So, when I am out of the house, mostly using the wheelchair.

I'm doing some writing, thinking about translation, looking over old stuff, and wondering where to take it. Probably there will be a series of translation posts over on Composite.

I read Blood in the Fruit which continued the magnificence of the Marq'ssan cycle. Though I babbled all weekend about it, nothing coherent is coming so far. Certainly not tonight... exhaustion is total. But it's good, and you should read the entire series if you like staring hard complex truths in the face and coming out okay (yet not unscathed).

Got along sort of okay with my parents. I tried hard to not be a jerk. A lot of the time with them I was also exhausted and withdrawn. But on the last 2 days I perked up a little and talked with my them about books or politics and with my mom also about cooking, the brands of things that are best, listened to her Fashion Ideas for me which admittedly didn't make me completely puke but which I still couldn't deal with (i.e. that I must go to Ch1co's or Barf-me-T4lbot's to buy "fancy jeans" which would fit me "right" and which leg straightness style were exhaustively described). I dyed her red streak and I demonstrated how to make sugar face scrub with lemon and olive oil... I CAN HAS GIRLY SKILLZ.

Also she kept going "I was GOING to do XYZ for you... but looks like you already have done it." Which was satisfying. We also all went to the bookstore and next-door-cafe, and the beach. Pi11ar Po1nt has an extremely accessible path! I had remembered it as more difficult. But gravel was minimal and the dirt packed & hard, very easy to wheel down. Then, a short somewhat difficult slope and the beach right there. I crutched down it. Up was harder. I found both up & down to be very scary and next time it would be better if I hung onto a person's arm on one side, like a handrail. It was a little hard to be at the beach and not be able to run about and dig and climb on the rocks.

At one point we were at the cafe and my parents both were telling me perhaps pointedly of other people's terrible divorces and how dumb they were and how divorce was a stupid idea and bad for everyone and meant that people were idiots, and divorce only justifiable if someone were like being BEATEN. I listened to this for a while and then reminded them gently that I HAD A FIRST MARRIAGE WHICH I LEFT IN A DIVORCE KTHXBAI. So then my mom shifted to talking about how sometimes people have disgusting affairs that ruin their lives and how dumb it is and how she for example would never and how pointless it would be and how she can't even imagine why a person would either have an affair or leave their marriage for some silly attraction that would probably be over soon anyway. (Subtle!) I listened to that too and then said something like "Well, I completely disagree with that way of thinking, fundamentally, on many levels, and don't think that having one relationship puts limits on other human relationships people can have, and I've always thought that and still do."

Then we talked about other things real quick!

Then Zond-7 came over for dinner. Jo's kids were also here and the Acrobat came over to tell us about his bridge made of popsicle sticks that he made at his management training seminar and brought us the bridge made of popsicle sticks that he made the week AFTER the management seminar when he got home, to bring his vision to life, and we tested the bridge with half gallon juice bottles, and the kids put on costumes and made a Clothing Shop at which we were forced to buy things. So, everything was lively and cheerful.

E. complained to me that she could not get on the internet because her parents wouldn't give her the password! Just as I was going O rly no really srsly and exchanging warning looks with Zond-7 as we realized we could not teach this child how to hack (it is best learned from other children who have no grown up morals) Jo came back and it was revealed that actually this is not all the way true and it is just that the wifi station has a password. Well call me gullible! I gave her the first Runaways comic books anyway and then Zond-7 later told me stories of how he and some other 12 year olds social-engineered a 12 digit password at some demo by each watching for 4 of the digits as the grown-up typed them in.

Anyway about poly things and family, I do not want to be closeted but I also feel a bit more temperate in being in-your-face. I hope it will just become sort of accepted over time and that no one makes a big deal.

One thing that was a big huge deal for me and made me cry was that my parents used to be super super homophobic and they did not acknowledge my relationship with my ex-girlfriend Misha when we lived together and moved to CA together. (Actually, we made each other marriage certificates, which I think of without saying anything whenever people ask me how many times I have been married. Maybe I should make her a really cool and sentimental divorce certificate several years too late.) And then for years my mom would go "Who? " in a totally fake, fake way whenever I talked about what Misha was up to (which was frequently lovely news to be proud of). And then we had some fairly hideous fights (me and my mom) when she would say things about "gay people" being disgusting or ... when I would mention other friends being pregnant ... she would say things like "that's disgusting, how could anyone DO that to an innocent child" (i.e. be queer and raise a child.) This is over 15 years, please realize. Then in the last couple of years my mom has been much more mellow about gayness and seems to have relented. Progressing from "well I don't see whose business of anyone's it is as long as they keep it quiet" to asking me how Dr. B or Misha are doing. Not exactly going to PFLAG meetings, but major progress, meaning a major relief to me. Well when I mentioned Misha's pregnancy and how there was a cool wiki with pictures my mom instantly was all excited and happy and demanded to see the wiki and leave congratulations on it and she referred to their little yoohoo as "another grandbaby". That was the part that made me cry with relief and happiness. What happened there? Isn't that amazing?

I don't require that a person realize that when they are hating-queers to me it is like they are stabbing me personally since they are talking about ME. It is quite a relief when that finally eases up.

I have often wondered at my own motives and worried that it was wrong for me to establish a relationship with my parents again after twice being thrown out of the family and then the years of painful semi-inclusion and tension. And in some ways for years it has felt like a mistake-ridden compromise that might be more painful to me than it is worth. But in the long run I think it's good (and it would also of course have been horribly painful to keep my distance and to know how much it would be paining them if I had.) Also, I felt (and still somewhat feel) that it is just a matter of time before some other Outing (like poly relationships, or blogs that are certainly easy enough to find once my anonymity was unfixably broached) would mean another confrontation, and being thrown out again. I understand it must be hard to find yourself a parent to someone like me (not because of queerness so much as because of annoying relentless uncompromising unquiet passionate uppityness, set permanently on public broadcast turned up to 11.) On my end, I think I have learned to throttle myself down a little bit when around them. (I was very interested to see Zond-7 do that same kind of muting around his family and how well it worked, and it struck me as being a very kind thing, difficult to do with sincerity, but not impossible.)

Rook had a cold the whole time and so did Zond-7 (who slept for almost 2 whole days, freaking me out somewhat.) I keep getting the feeling of almost-a-cold.

The weekend was as low key on the surface as possible, most of the time, but very intense underneath the surface.

Comments

[Melissa P.]

How emotional for you!
I can feel it just reading all about it. Nice to hear your mom is lightening up a bit for you.
Hope your evening is now quiet.

[fridawrites]

Parents can be exhausting. Funny how your mom is still trying to choose clothes for you, and great that you finished a lot of projects before she visited. Nothing begets projects or a clean house like parents visiting.

It's probably good for parents in general to be exposed to ideas other than their own. My friends' parents and my own have mellowed out over time too, and we're not sure whether if it's some presenility we should worry about, or whether they've given up on us, or if the other shoe will drop again.

[Lori S.]

not because of queerness so much as because of annoying relentless uncompromising unquiet passionate uppityness, set permanently on public broadcast turned up to 11.

This made me giggle. I am not set on public broadcast level 11, and I have a very different relationship with my own parents, but yes, I see this with my own folks. Fortunately, both they and I have mellowed over time as well.

[a very public sociologist]

Great post. I love the seamless way you weave lolcat speak into your meditation. How long will it be before it gets so overground that even your folks are talking about people who divorce being made of fail, nattering about harbls, and generally warming their feetz in your macaronis?

[funky monkey]

Well - it is hard to dislike Misha. I liked her even when she wanted to murder me. ;-)