I apologize for this week's post delay, but I've been recovering from a marathon of emotionally charged family functions...
Little Gen and I journeyed to the far east...that is, Pennsylvania...last week to meet the other sister's Mexican boyfriend, attend a cousin's wedding, and take an extended family portrait.
Land mines, all, we somehow managed to maneuver through without any fatalities, save my sister's pride when she accidentally flashed her undies for the entire wedding reception hall.
Fortunately our family is more of the passive aggressive variety, so judgments remained comfortably beneath a surface which any casual observer might call congenial.
But while family has the magical talent of stripping away pretense, leaving all of us in our knickers, it also has the potential to re-ground us.
As soon as I stepped off the plane, I was greeted by a melancholic wall of wet jungle air. Here in the east, they call it humidity. My dad was waiting with the car, and crawling into the bed my mom prepared, I felt safe from more than the darkness outside.
Despite running the conversation gauntlet, dodging personal questions about my strange occupations and failing love life, I found myself lulled by the familiar, reminded of who I really am.
I was back in context. It's constantly changing--I'm not what I was nor what I will be--but that's OK because no one else can fill my place. And believe me, when you have a family that is growing exponentially, space is not something you take for granted.
Trying to wrangle the now forty plus members of our family into a frame, the photographer looked at me and asked, "Are you married"? Yes, I am the oldest unmarried maid in my generation, but I only have that distinction because of the now majority of married cousins.
And those married cousins are producing a whole new generation of little people, some of whom are at that ripe age of perceiving difference. Who will show them that oddity is not to be feared, that deformity is just a human condition? I know one, Finneas the Wee Arm, who does the trick.
He's way more comfortable in social settings anyway.
OneArmGirl
Little Gen and I journeyed to the far east...that is, Pennsylvania...last week to meet the other sister's Mexican boyfriend, attend a cousin's wedding, and take an extended family portrait.
Land mines, all, we somehow managed to maneuver through without any fatalities, save my sister's pride when she accidentally flashed her undies for the entire wedding reception hall.
But while family has the magical talent of stripping away pretense, leaving all of us in our knickers, it also has the potential to re-ground us.
As soon as I stepped off the plane, I was greeted by a melancholic wall of wet jungle air. Here in the east, they call it humidity. My dad was waiting with the car, and crawling into the bed my mom prepared, I felt safe from more than the darkness outside.
Despite running the conversation gauntlet, dodging personal questions about my strange occupations and failing love life, I found myself lulled by the familiar, reminded of who I really am.
I was back in context. It's constantly changing--I'm not what I was nor what I will be--but that's OK because no one else can fill my place. And believe me, when you have a family that is growing exponentially, space is not something you take for granted.
Trying to wrangle the now forty plus members of our family into a frame, the photographer looked at me and asked, "Are you married"? Yes, I am the oldest unmarried maid in my generation, but I only have that distinction because of the now majority of married cousins.
And those married cousins are producing a whole new generation of little people, some of whom are at that ripe age of perceiving difference. Who will show them that oddity is not to be feared, that deformity is just a human condition? I know one, Finneas the Wee Arm, who does the trick.
He's way more comfortable in social settings anyway.
OneArmGirl
