Well, this weekend, I was able to get a good jump on the first bag of bags. I think the trick is going to be putting it through a rigerous test once it’s complete, because I’m not sure about the bottom, if the seam is going to hold and I might need to modify how I’m doing that. Also, the stamping on the bags is not as firmly affixed to the bags as one might hope if one is going to have that stuff passing over her skin repeatedly.
All this, of course, means that I’ve finished the witch’s hat, but keep forgetting to bring it with me up to Mack’s so that he can help me figure out what kind of form I’m going to need so that it holds its shape as it dries after I felt it.
I talked to my cousin J. yesterday and his wife is all wondering what our Grandpa was like and J. says he told her to think of all the things that bother her about my dad, his dad, and our aunt and that should give her a pretty good clue about what Grandpa was like.
Am I getting soft in my old age, America? Because, yeah, he was a grouchy old absuive jerk. But he was brilliant and quick-witted and good to people he wasn’t related to. When he died, the congregation at the funeral was about half African American, because he was the only white guy in the city who would sell black folks insurance.
I don’t know. You know, it seems like the thing with being dead is that, as time washes over your memory, you get that small, round, hard polish, like river rock, that what remains is the hardest stuff. And maybe it is true that, at his core, my grandpa was a complete fucker.
But I don’t know. You know, that weight isn’t his to carry anymore and while I would completely be opposed to revising history to remember him as someone only sweetness and light, it does seem to me that it’s a weird thing we’re doing to ourselves as a family–trying to say that being a member of our family means something great and special while at the same time tracing that family back to the kids and grandkids and great grandkids of a man we’ve all collectively written off as an abuser who did our parents wrong.
You can’t carry both things and move forward. It’s too much weight.
On a side note, my dad is all upset because he feels that my nephew is disdainful and dismissive of my mom and that his attitude towards women sucks and my dad is disturbed because my brother seems to move through life like women only have one purpose. And my mom said to my dad “What did you expect would come of how you treated me?”
Which, I have to admit, made me laugh long and hard. But my mom made her choices, too.
It’s funny. We were talking about stuff yesterday and I was saying how embarrassed I was at how old I was when I learned that women could have orgasms. And the person I was talking to was like “Doesn’t that kind of make you angry that your mom didn’t tell you that.” And I didn’t really have an answer. I mean, after the disasterous tampon discussion, it didn’t surprise me or seem odd to me that Mom and I didn’t really talk about anything intimate after that.
But I was thinking about it on the way home and I can’t really remember my mom teaching me anything serious.
I don’t know. I think my mom wanted more from life than she got, but she never seemed to act like she felt like she had any right to expect it. So, if anything was going to get done in my family, Dad had to do it.
But even that isn’t fair, because my mom has always been the bravest person in our family, too. The person charged with getting bugs out of the house and catching mice and dealing with the public and just making sure that things happened as they needed to happen.
My dad was always like “You’re not going to do this. [pause] Okay, go ahead.”
And my mom was always like “Oh I’m not sure if you should be doing that.”
And my mom could have walked away at any point and we often, all of us, expected that she would. Probably thought that she should. But I think she drew her line at a place she knew my dad would never cross, so she stayed because he would never do the thing she had decided would mean she had to leave.
But the thing is, had she left, he would have gone with her. In fact, I often thing he was pushing her to leave so that he, too, would have an excuse to leave.
It’s a hard thing being married to a minister. It’s like a third person in your marriage, and not in the fun way. And the thing, I think, that’s always been hardest for my immediate family is that my dad felt like he had to be a minister and my mom was never going to be the person to say “Okay, we’re done with this bullshit.”
And that, my friends, I think is the fundimental issue. At its core, of course, it’s sexist. My dad could have and should have left the ministry way back when he first realized how much it sucked. But he could not defy God, conveniently, who was conveniently silent on matters after His initial butting in. But my mom bears the brunt of the blame for not forcing the issue. Which is grossly unfair.
I don’t know. That’s why I think religion is stupid. You do what you’re told and what do you get for your troubles? It just seems like a bad deal all around and the response to recognizing it’s a bad deal is just to be told to have more faith, pray more, put yourself on the line more, open yourself up more.
And to what end?
Where was I?
My grandpa.
Was he a fucker?
Yes.
But aren’t we all?
So, what are you going to do? I’m tired of fuckers, for sure, but I’m much more tired of good people who are sure of the rightness of their actions, let me tell you. Give me some uncertainty and some rage at that uncertainty and…
I guess what I’m saying is that we’re all going out one way or another and I would rather burn than be smothered.
Filed under: Family, Stories About Me, arts & crafts
The problem with fuckers is that so often they were horrible to everyone (or, at least, to many) in the same ways, but the good things about them were displayed pretty randomly. So you get consensus on the bad parts but only random flashes of insight about the good ones. I see this happening as my sisters and I discuss our father; we can agree very easily about what was wrong with him, but there’s no cohesion about what was right, because he never did the same rights things with any consistency.
[...] and Burned Posted on August 4, 2008 by GingerSnaps In which Aunt B makes me cry for different [...]
Because, yeah, he was a grouchy old absuive jerk. But he was brilliant and quick-witted and good to people he wasn’t related to.
Someone smarter than me said, more eloquently too, that if someone is kind to me but treats a waiter rudely, they’re not a nice person. I think this can be applied here.
My husband and I both have otherwise gregarious relatives that have habitually taken out their frustrations – not caused by us – on us in ugly and painful ways. Just because 95% of the people they encounter will never know that side of them and may think they are “good” people does not negate what they have said privately, nor does it mean that he or I should say, “Aw, shucks, but they’re so nice to everyone else!” Especially because I don’t say “shucks,” but I digress.
The thing that bothers me, and the thing I think I haven’t gotten across clearly here, is exactly that we define ourselves so strongly as a family based on being tied back to this man and yet we clearly all feel deeply bruised by him.
What I mean is that I think we’re all searching for some thing that will make us go “Aha! Now I understand. And now I can forgive the things that happened to me. I know where to assign blame and how firmly to affix it to which people.”
And I keep trying to figure out some way out of that, even though it cuts to the very core of my nature to want to do that.
I am not interested in understanding or forgiving any of the grand Patriarchs who have shaped my life. I’m interested in making my peace with it.
And I feel like that’s happening, slowly, over time. But it’s hard. Worthwhile but hard.
How do you make your peace with it if you don’t understand it, though? Leaving forgiveness aside, if you don’t understand what someone was doing — the pattern of actions, the web of emotions behind it — then what is there to come to terms with besides a bunch of disconnected events?
nm,
I’d say it’s a lot easier to come to terms with a bunch of disconnected events. As confusing as they may be, it seems a lot easier to make peace with seemingly disconnected crappy events, surrendering of your own power any understanding of why those events happened to you/your family, than it is to make peace with pathological behavior, which may have triggers but still do not make logical sense. Whether either approach is better, I don’t know.
Yeah, I guess I’m not sure what would make me feel okay about this. Especially because as I get older, I see that at least his behavior was straightforward and people could see it and understand it for what it was and either choose to further it or stand against it. But the kinds of fucked up stuff that folks did in response to his behavior, that stuff that gets carried down and passed on, that still messes with us?
I’d like to let go of that.
The secrets. Oh, god. The secrets that everyone in my family has and everyone wants to tell you as along as you agree to tell no one else.
I’m at the point where I’m just constantly saying “If no one else can know, don’t tell me, because I have a blog.”
Ha.
Samantha Y, I guess that’s something everyone will have a different response to. I found it a lot easier to let go of a whole package of stuff I had to deal with (including things people did as reactions to things other people had done) when I could see it as an interconnected whole. For me, that made it just one thing to come to terms with, instead of a variety of different behaviors by a number of different people. But that’s how my mind works; I see patterns and exceptions to patterns very easily. You and B are quite right that not everyone perceives the world that way, and that what worked for me once I figured it out isn’t necessarily for everyone. Other people, nm, other people.
B, about secrets: did you ever see the movie Secrets and Lies? I remember going to see it when it came out, and remarking at the end “gosh, we had lots more secrets and lies than that in my family.” I can laugh about it now.
as usual, nm beat me to the punch — in order to make sure we can do better, we can best learn from the actions of others in amending our own behavior.
I had a conversation recently with my 89 year old Granny. We were talking about some bad behavior on the part of someone and she said “well, if you knew her mother, you’d understand”
Seems to me, at least in the South, as that’s my point of reference, we kind of give license to be a little crazy down here (ok, a lot) – and somehow the notion that everybody’s got a nut or 2 in the family gives those people some sort of a pass.
I’ve examined the behavior of many people from whom I am descended. And to be honest, the saying holds true in some form or fashion that “we deplore the behavior in others, that we see in ourselves”
On the topic of family secrets, your family doesn’t hold any monopoly. And in my experience, secrets are a very detrimental thing – in my own family the secrets have allowed behavior to be enabled, for example – i.e. don’t tell anyone so and so has a substance abuse problem, because that would cause worry — which allows the person to not have to seek help. Or “don’t tell so and so that _____ is in jail for the sale of meth” as it would upset the older folks”
Anyway, secrets don’t stay secrets for very long. They all come out eventually….
You may want to check out craftster.org for tips on the plastic bag-bags… I don’t know if you’re crocheting them or doing something different, but I’ve seen a number of bags and wallets on there made from grocery bags.