It struck me recently that the people that my Mom and I know in common are primarily from my Anaheim life that I left when I was eleven. (And there are more of them than you might think, since my Mom has kept in touch with them through missionary newsletters for twenty years.) For a short period of time, when I lived in Florida, I knew the people my Mom worked and socialized with, but many of those people have moved on as missionaries do, and now my Mom no longer works at Wycliffe. So we don't really talk about any of those people anymore.
This means that when I go home, the gossip that binds us is primarily about people that haven't really been a part of my life for twenty years. Nonetheless, I know who their kids are dating and marrying, when the babies are born, what the troubles are, if there's juicy news that somehow has made it into common knowledge, and that's about it. Basically, the life milestones: birth, marriage, death, and humiliation.
This has an interesting effect on me. I find I'm really curious for the news, like if I'm catching up on a TV show I only occasionally watch. But then my stomach starts to knot up. I feel so disconnected from these people, and yet I've been hearing their news all my life. I wonder what these people know about me--other than my marital and motherhood status. And I am left with the eerie feeling that the only thing that really matters is reaching the milestones. I find myself wondering what on earth these people are really like. What do they think about on a day-to-day basis? What embarrasses them? What do they wonder about? What questions haunt them?
But mostly, I'm noticing how hard it is to bridge the gap from the milestones to what makes me who I am when I talk to my Mom. And I've been wondering if this strange cast of characters--like ghosts or friends-once-removed--makes the gap feel bigger.
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8 comments:
I loved reading this post.
It's interesting because right after reading this post, the first thing that came to my mind was, "You should tell your parents I'm gay." Then I thought, "Whoa! Don't tell them that!!!"
Why the first thought? I think whenever life gets summed up in terms of milestones, I feel erased--like nothing about who I am will be transferred in that narrative. I don't mean to say that anyone knows the real you just because they can say, "Kirsten moved to NYC and married Eric. They are thinking about having children." But they would know about some genuinely meaningful, positive elements of your life. I don't mean positive as in good (though in your case, they are that), but positive in that they are concrete forms that give shape to your life.
When people in my community talk about my life using landmarks, I feel erased, invisible, incredibly vulnerable. Worse than that: when I talk to people in my community about my life using landmarks, I feel erased. None of the conventional waymarks apply: NOT married, NOT dating, NOT a mother, NOT even living somewhere of note (still at home), NOT sure what she is going to be when she grows up. In summary, NOT.
The applicable landmarks that define my adult life, if I were boil it down to the most parallel elements:
* immediate crisis of faith at 18 years old upon entering college
* bewildering, excruciating romance with a woman at 23 upon leaving college
* devastating, life-altering break-up experience at 26
* two bewilderingly, excruciating brushes with heterosexual romance in late twenties, neither truly realized, both with men otherwise attached
If I think about this information being circulated, I generally feel glad to be invisible. But sometimes, I'm not. Remember that portion of "Ordinary Time" in which Nancy Mairs describes her husband's request that she write about his affair with another woman? She reflects on this request in terms of our need to be loved. Her husband didn't like that he always came out smelling like roses in her previous books. He wanted her to write his real, flawed self into being. And she talks about how we cannot feel loved if we do not feel seen. I have always loved that passage.
Reading this post, I feel sad thinking about how, if I were part of the Anaheim community, there is a pretty good chance your mother wouldn't have any gossip to convey about me, because my actual landmark list isn't circulated by my family or church. This reticence spares me some humiliation, but also spares me from the sense of being known.
I guess I am saying that, even though landmarks can't convey anything about what haunts a person, or who they are deep inside, they still do seem to perform a certain function in creating communal intimacy: providing information on par with the small, coarse-grain maps in tourbooks showing only the downtown center--from which nobody could claim intimacy with the city, but to which every traveler refers.
I think my point, in short, with my actual landmark list and whatnot, is that, even though everything on it falls into the category of "humiliation" (given the options of birth, marriage, death, and humiliation), sometimes I'd still like my map to be published in the tourbook.
I appreciated reading your thoughts, firefly.
I think many important life maps are obliterated by "the milestones." Wouldn't it be interesting to compare "milestones" from very different communities. I wonder what would be the big moments within the gay community. (A gay community?) Coming Out to your family? The first devastating break up? Finding the courage to speak out for yourself? These are character-building, landmark moments that are shared by many. But there is a dominant voice, or at least my family participates in what I perceive to be the dominant voice, which focuses primarily on marrying and reproducing. I think it makes it challenging for people who don't fit into the patterns, but still want to experience intimate, lasting partnerships and raising children. Have you read Dan Savage's book "The Commitment"? He talks about he and his partner's journey toward marriage. I enjoyed it.
But that's me free associating. In terms of you as my friend, I hate to think of you being erased. I hate that this pattern with my Mom makes it so hard for me to share about your life with her. My answers to "how's ____?" always feel so shallow and it makes me frustrated. Or it makes clear the distances between us.
I thought that was a beautiful metaphor about the tour book, firefly.
I've been having the opposite kind of insecurity lately, where I wonder why some part of me finds it so urgent to do the married with children life, and if I need to have more adventures beforehand to be a good, altruistic human being.
Cuong and I just visited my aunt and uncle, who made a conscious decision not to have children, and have had the most interesting lives of anybody I know. And firefly's also right up there in the list of most interesting people I know. I guess I'm just saying, maybe we could add to the milestones: places traveled to, jobs had, and other once-in-a-liftime experiences.
I don't mean to dismiss your very real experience of marginal living, I just thought I'd throw my thoughts out there for what it's worth.
Kirsten, I would love to schedule a time we can chat. Are you available on Sunday?
On the milestones note I totally understand how you might feel the reproduction pressure, and I can only imagine how important that is in the community you are referring to here. I am one of the few who decided at the age of 28 that I do not want children. It was so shocking to my mother especially, who initially blamed it all on Walter for leading me astray. In the end, I am so happy with the decision. It is interesting how much shock, awe and dissappointment wash over people's faces when I say there are no plans for children. Thankfully, my mom and others have already accepted our decision and moved on. I like what Dances said about being interesting beyond the milestones, and I agree. There are very interesting people out there with no kids and rich meaningful lives. My role as an Auntie with my friend's children, for example, has been a truly awesome experience. Life is so much more than coupling and reproduction. Like my friend who is a wonderful mother says, "I get to observe and be part of your life without kids, and you get to observe and be part of mine with three. We both give up and attain dreams either way." Walter and I have already travelled abroad twice in the last 3 years. We can leave home on a quick getaway without a second thought. We can enjoy work without commitments at home. There is nothing to fight about because we have very little stress. Anyway, that highlights just some benefits we enjoy without kids. But I also want to emphasize how much respect I have for parents too.
This is from Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert (Just pretend I'm reading it aloud):
"But what if, either by choice or by reluctant necessity, you end up not participating in this comforting cycle of family and continuity? What if you step out? Where do you sit at the reunion? How do you mark time's passage without the fear that you've just frittered away your time on earth without being relevant? You'll need to find another purpose, another measure by which to judge whether or not you have been a successful human being. I love children, but what if I don't have any? What kind of person does that make me? Virginia Woolf wrote, 'Across the broad continent of a woman's life falls the shadow of a sword.' On one side of the sword, she said, there lies convention and tradition and order, where 'all is correct.' But on the other side of that sword, if you're crazy enough to cross it and choose a life that does not follow convention, 'all is confusion. Nothing follows a regular course.' Her argument was that the crossing of the shadow of that sword may bring a far more interesting existence to a woman, but you can bet it will also be more perilous."
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