Parents and grandparents, you know, are authority figures, so they're kind of not your friends until you're grown up, if ever. And most brothers and sisters, if they're much older or younger than you, aren't your friends at once, for either they are bossing you around, or you're bossing them around. It's not what Aristotle would call a relationship of equals.
However, if you are only a year and a half (or less) older or younger than one of your siblings, chances are you might have become a real friend with them before anyone else. And I think this is indeed the case between me and my first friend ever, my brother Nulli Secundus.
I don't think I can remember a time before there was a Nulli Secundus. When I greatly amused myself by sitting on the well-sprung sofa and bouncing my head off the backrest, there Nulli was beside me, also bouncing away, to the great detriment of the sofa. When I stomped around the kitchen table in Cambridge, UK, in my halcyon near-infancy, blowing a whistle, there was Nulli banging a drum. ("WILL YOU KIDS QUIT IT!?" yelled our 30-something post-doc father.)
There is, sadly, evidence on film that I stole my brother's toys, and now that I think of it, I probably bullied him, but he was so good-natured, he didn't seem to notice or care until he was, you know, fourteen or so. And, even though he was so much better than me at music and math and computers and such other valuable and useful stuff, it never occurred to me, even once, to push him down the stairs or flush him down the toilet.
Sometimes it is hard to reconcile the memory of that little platinum blond boy with the contemporary reality of the hulking refrigerator-shaped man with the house, wife and kids in Estrie. The little boy was a trusting friend of all the world, and the big guy, although friendly, has learned enough about human nature to become deeply suspicious. (Frankly, I sort of hate the world for that, but at least I remember his happy days of innocent trust in the goodness of everyone and everything.) However, two things unite the boy and the man: the big smile and the piano. One of the great delights of my childhood, despite my own lack of talent, was waking up to the sound of my brother playing the "standard upright" on Saturday mornings--especially Smurf music, he loved Smurf music. Now one of the highlights of every visit home is listing to my brother wallop out Chopin on his grand.
One of the good things about being a year and a bit older than my brother is that I get the scary birthdays first. I'm like the penguin who somehow is the first to get nudged into the water while the other penguins watch to see if something eats him. Well, I had a very good time when I was the age my brother is now, so I can assure him it's all good, and I hope he has a very happy birthday.
Showing posts with label Family. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Family. Show all posts
Thursday, 30 April 2015
Monday, 16 March 2015
When God Sends None
When I was a university freshman, I ran with a tough Catholic crowd, and one guy loved to carry out orthodoxy tests. The one I remember best is the openness-to-life one.
"How many children do you want?" he would ask some unsuspecting pal.
"I don't know. Two?"
"Heretic!"
"How many children do you want?" he asked another unsuspecting pal.
"Lots! Six--maybe eight?"
"Heretic!"
So I was ready when he got me in his sights.
"Seraphic, how many children do you want?"
"As many as God sends," I said breezily.
He was very disappointed.
"Aw. You got it right."
And I thought about this last night, after a long, tiring Mothering Sunday trip to see my mother-in-law, who mentioned, just in general, that her boyfriend was becoming a grandfather, and at once I thought that because of me she would never be a grandmother. I squashed the thought immediately. When I told her last year about The Horrible Clueless NHS Phone Call, she was clearly sorry for me, not at all for herself. She is a very kindly woman, and I really wish that she could have grandchildren, but she had only the one child, and there it is.
As many as God sends.
I came home to comments--one anonymous, one by a father of many--giving me a hard time because of a comment I made in connection with women who assume Catholic men will reject them because they are too old to give birth to big families. As their comments were made on Saturday, it is just bad luck that I happened to read them on Mother's Day.
Nevertheless, I am restricting anonymous comments again because I am not putting myself out there so that people can make uncharitable assumptions about my intentions and voice them without so much as a pseudonym. Nor am I particularly interested in married men parading their happiness at having got the exact number of children they wanted in a blog read primarily by Single, childless women. In the Catholic world, married men with children are not exactly marginalized. Nor are they particularly clever about the feelings of childless women.
To return to the subject of orthodoxy and hopes for children, it is a curious feature of Catholic marriage that nobody can put aside his or her spouse just because they are infertile. You would think a God who loves children so much would indeed have made that the great exception to the no-divorce-and-remarriage rule. After all, the primary reason for marriage IS children. But He didn't make that exception.
When I was going through The Worst Day of My Married Life, it did cross my mind to tell B.A. he should ditch me and find someone younger, but fortunately I didn't do such a self-pitying and insulting thing. It would have hurt B.A. very much, and although I am not an angel, I do not spit on God's most generous gifts. Meanwhile I knew perfectly well that we were sacramentally married, so there was no going back for any reason, including infertility.
"As many as God sends"--even when God sends none.
I know very well that many of my Single readers dread being childless even more than they dread never finding the love of a husband. Well, I will not lie. At times it feels absolutely horrible. I came from a big family, I assumed, as a teenager, that I would have a big family myself one day, and big families feel "normal" to me. It never occurred to me that God wouldn't send me any children at all if I married, but here we are.
There are two comforts in this--and by the way, we are all clear that when I talk about hopes for marriage and children I am talking to childless, Single women, yes? Childless, Single women who are devout Catholics and therefore would never dream of going down the pub and getting themselves knocked up by a stranger, yes? And don't look so shocked, for such an tactic was suggested to me by a divorced mother of two. It would no doubt blow happy married fathers' minds what is proposed to Single, childless women by their well-meaning friends.
The two comforts are as follow:
1. Because I grew up in a "large" family, I still have that large family, and although the older members die, younger ones are born. I have myself expanded that family by adding B.A., and thus although I will probably never give B.A. children, I have given him a new mother, father, brothers, sisters, nephews and a niece.
2. Benedict Ambrose did not marry me as the future mother of his children but as me, myself, 38 years old--slightly older than himself, in fact. This was not because he was a bad Catholic, closed off from life, but because he wanted to marry me, and my ability to have children was not something he thought about much at all. He was also in his late thirties, and had dated older women before. Clearly dating-so-as-to-get-kids had never been his priority.
And I am writing out such personal, so deeply felt thoughts not because I am some kind of exhibitionist or emo-blogger, but to illustrate to frightened single, childless women over 25 that they do not have cause to fear permanent rejection by Catholic men because they are growing older.
Yes, they will meet deeply insensitive men who will reject them because they, the men, havefantasies assumptions about their own untried potency and assume that they will be able to beget and financially support any number of children as long as they have access to young-enough ovaries. But not all men are like that. Indeed, I would say precious few, and those few are not worth knowing anyway. They would fail my friend's little orthodoxy test. If we want to get right down to it, the super-correct, absolutely obedient and faith-filled answer to "How many children do you want?" is "As many as God sends, even if He sends none."
Comments OFF.
"How many children do you want?" he would ask some unsuspecting pal.
"I don't know. Two?"
"Heretic!"
"How many children do you want?" he asked another unsuspecting pal.
"Lots! Six--maybe eight?"
"Heretic!"
So I was ready when he got me in his sights.
"Seraphic, how many children do you want?"
"As many as God sends," I said breezily.
He was very disappointed.
"Aw. You got it right."
And I thought about this last night, after a long, tiring Mothering Sunday trip to see my mother-in-law, who mentioned, just in general, that her boyfriend was becoming a grandfather, and at once I thought that because of me she would never be a grandmother. I squashed the thought immediately. When I told her last year about The Horrible Clueless NHS Phone Call, she was clearly sorry for me, not at all for herself. She is a very kindly woman, and I really wish that she could have grandchildren, but she had only the one child, and there it is.
As many as God sends.
I came home to comments--one anonymous, one by a father of many--giving me a hard time because of a comment I made in connection with women who assume Catholic men will reject them because they are too old to give birth to big families. As their comments were made on Saturday, it is just bad luck that I happened to read them on Mother's Day.
Nevertheless, I am restricting anonymous comments again because I am not putting myself out there so that people can make uncharitable assumptions about my intentions and voice them without so much as a pseudonym. Nor am I particularly interested in married men parading their happiness at having got the exact number of children they wanted in a blog read primarily by Single, childless women. In the Catholic world, married men with children are not exactly marginalized. Nor are they particularly clever about the feelings of childless women.
To return to the subject of orthodoxy and hopes for children, it is a curious feature of Catholic marriage that nobody can put aside his or her spouse just because they are infertile. You would think a God who loves children so much would indeed have made that the great exception to the no-divorce-and-remarriage rule. After all, the primary reason for marriage IS children. But He didn't make that exception.
When I was going through The Worst Day of My Married Life, it did cross my mind to tell B.A. he should ditch me and find someone younger, but fortunately I didn't do such a self-pitying and insulting thing. It would have hurt B.A. very much, and although I am not an angel, I do not spit on God's most generous gifts. Meanwhile I knew perfectly well that we were sacramentally married, so there was no going back for any reason, including infertility.
"As many as God sends"--even when God sends none.
I know very well that many of my Single readers dread being childless even more than they dread never finding the love of a husband. Well, I will not lie. At times it feels absolutely horrible. I came from a big family, I assumed, as a teenager, that I would have a big family myself one day, and big families feel "normal" to me. It never occurred to me that God wouldn't send me any children at all if I married, but here we are.
There are two comforts in this--and by the way, we are all clear that when I talk about hopes for marriage and children I am talking to childless, Single women, yes? Childless, Single women who are devout Catholics and therefore would never dream of going down the pub and getting themselves knocked up by a stranger, yes? And don't look so shocked, for such an tactic was suggested to me by a divorced mother of two. It would no doubt blow happy married fathers' minds what is proposed to Single, childless women by their well-meaning friends.
The two comforts are as follow:
1. Because I grew up in a "large" family, I still have that large family, and although the older members die, younger ones are born. I have myself expanded that family by adding B.A., and thus although I will probably never give B.A. children, I have given him a new mother, father, brothers, sisters, nephews and a niece.
2. Benedict Ambrose did not marry me as the future mother of his children but as me, myself, 38 years old--slightly older than himself, in fact. This was not because he was a bad Catholic, closed off from life, but because he wanted to marry me, and my ability to have children was not something he thought about much at all. He was also in his late thirties, and had dated older women before. Clearly dating-so-as-to-get-kids had never been his priority.
And I am writing out such personal, so deeply felt thoughts not because I am some kind of exhibitionist or emo-blogger, but to illustrate to frightened single, childless women over 25 that they do not have cause to fear permanent rejection by Catholic men because they are growing older.
Yes, they will meet deeply insensitive men who will reject them because they, the men, have
Comments OFF.
Tuesday, 24 February 2015
Aunting is Easy
 |
| "Auntie, I want to colour Jesus!" |
When my brother got married, he gave me a new sister, and when they had children, they gave me a new nephew and then B.A. and me a niece, and their parents grandchildren, and their nephew cousins. Meanwhile, they were given a host of uncles and aunts at birth, thanks to their four grandparents.
It would be hard to say when my married brother's family started, so I'll posit Adam and Eve.
At any rate, my familial roles--adult daughter/sister/aunt/wife --are some of the easiest, made even easier because I live so far from everyone in the family except B.A. I very much enjoy my role as Holiday Daughter-Hostess, and I also enjoy visiting my nephews and niece and never having to shout at them or discipline them in any way. When things get out of control, I just say, "Oh, [nephew], you are making me very nervous. I think I forgot to take my pill. Did I take my pill?" Then I run away.
Oops. I lie. I did whine a bit on Sunday when I was writing a column and Popcorn and Peanut were having a noisy battle beside me. However when my niece barged into her aunt-occupied room while I was on the phone with a colleague, it was another story.
Me: [Snarling] "And I think that's just outrageous and if he thinks he can get away with ---- [Sweetly] Oh, hello, Popcorn sweetie, Auntie's working so could you go out and shut the door ? Thanks. [Snarling] If he thinks he can get away with this, he can think again!
Colleague: "Well, I know! And I can't STAND that kind of--Honey, will you give that to your mother? Take it to your mother...."
As Colleague and I shouted our agreements at each other, Popcorn drew portraits of green men and slid them under the door.
My auntie duties were very light and most enjoyable. They were as follows:
1. bringing presents
2. paying attention
3. drawing pictures
4. helping colour the pictures
5. building a castle
6. building a prison
7. random acts of tidying and toy-finding
8. counselling a nephew having a meltdown ("She hates me!" "No, she doesn't. She LOVES you." "She won't pay attention to me!" "She'll play with you tomorrow." "She won't!")
9. becoming personally involved in a battle between a woolly rabbit and whatever that was
10. occasional niece-dressing
11. preventing unwarranted karate attacks
12. apologizing for saying "Crap" over the phone after seeing niece had snuck in to listen
Meanwhile my brother and his wife were busy from dawn till well after dusk. So I must admit that aunting is easy.
Sunday, 19 October 2014
What is a Family?
I saw the CNS headline saying that the Synod had given encouragement to the "traditional" families, which suggests that Francis X Rocca's sub-editor thinks there are other kinds of families. The creeping relativism of sub-editors drives me nuts; they should all be sent to theology school.
Personally, I do not think B.A. and I constitute a family on our very own. God has not blessed us with children, so in my view we're just a married couple rattling around a very big house. If we were a tree, we might be a handsome leafy green apple tree--but one of the ones that never bears fruit.
However, if I think of us not as a tree but as a BRANCH of a tree, the tree being our Canadian family whose branches have embraced those of my sister-in-law's Romanian family, then I can think of us as a family. Our branch, I hope, gives support and shade to the fruit-laden branches.
The model of a family that is just PARTNER+PARTNER annoys me to no end. It's like a diet of chocolate: chocolate is all very nice, but it's not enough to keep you going. And what an impoverishment of one's identity to be a PARTNER first and last. I myself am not a partner, but a wife, a daughter, a sister, an aunt, a sister-in-law, a daughter-in-law, a niece, a great-niece, a grand-daughter and a great-grand-daughter. (I'm not really a cousin, though, since I have no first cousins and barely know my second cousins and first cousins once removed. They aren't on the prayer list.)
My family is as rich in relationships as it is because three married couples, my American grandparents, my parents, and my brother's in-laws, had more than one child. My nephew Pirate rightly lobbied me for Scottish cousins, and I told him he should request more cousins from his current source of cousins.
Oh dear. I do wish I could give him Scottish cousins. Instead I will leave him and his Canadian cousins some legal and technical problems when B.A. and I shuffle off this mortal coil--what to do with all the furniture, etc. Poor them. They will have to take time off work and squabble over the paintings. However, the thought cheers me up immensely.
Yes, I am indeed part of a living and growing family, and will be even when I am dead. I envision wonderful three-sided (at very least) discussions about B.A.'s and my health, eccentricities, deaths and property. YAY! And since I was brought up to pray for the soul of my never-married, childless Uncle Art, I see no reason why my niece's and nephews' children shouldn't be brought up to pray for our souls. (Uncle Art, by the way, gave me a wonderful toy broom when I was very small. I loved it. Little did Uncle Art know this gift would help to keep his memory green into the 21st century.)
The only family there is is the "traditional family". However, everyone belongs to one. It doesn't (or shouldn't) matter if you aren't the trunk or the most important or the most fruitful branch or taken from a sick tree and grafted onto a healthier one or, indeed, even alive on earth anymore. Family is family. Blood is thicker than water.
Personally, I do not think B.A. and I constitute a family on our very own. God has not blessed us with children, so in my view we're just a married couple rattling around a very big house. If we were a tree, we might be a handsome leafy green apple tree--but one of the ones that never bears fruit.
However, if I think of us not as a tree but as a BRANCH of a tree, the tree being our Canadian family whose branches have embraced those of my sister-in-law's Romanian family, then I can think of us as a family. Our branch, I hope, gives support and shade to the fruit-laden branches.
The model of a family that is just PARTNER+PARTNER annoys me to no end. It's like a diet of chocolate: chocolate is all very nice, but it's not enough to keep you going. And what an impoverishment of one's identity to be a PARTNER first and last. I myself am not a partner, but a wife, a daughter, a sister, an aunt, a sister-in-law, a daughter-in-law, a niece, a great-niece, a grand-daughter and a great-grand-daughter. (I'm not really a cousin, though, since I have no first cousins and barely know my second cousins and first cousins once removed. They aren't on the prayer list.)
My family is as rich in relationships as it is because three married couples, my American grandparents, my parents, and my brother's in-laws, had more than one child. My nephew Pirate rightly lobbied me for Scottish cousins, and I told him he should request more cousins from his current source of cousins.
Oh dear. I do wish I could give him Scottish cousins. Instead I will leave him and his Canadian cousins some legal and technical problems when B.A. and I shuffle off this mortal coil--what to do with all the furniture, etc. Poor them. They will have to take time off work and squabble over the paintings. However, the thought cheers me up immensely.
Yes, I am indeed part of a living and growing family, and will be even when I am dead. I envision wonderful three-sided (at very least) discussions about B.A.'s and my health, eccentricities, deaths and property. YAY! And since I was brought up to pray for the soul of my never-married, childless Uncle Art, I see no reason why my niece's and nephews' children shouldn't be brought up to pray for our souls. (Uncle Art, by the way, gave me a wonderful toy broom when I was very small. I loved it. Little did Uncle Art know this gift would help to keep his memory green into the 21st century.)
The only family there is is the "traditional family". However, everyone belongs to one. It doesn't (or shouldn't) matter if you aren't the trunk or the most important or the most fruitful branch or taken from a sick tree and grafted onto a healthier one or, indeed, even alive on earth anymore. Family is family. Blood is thicker than water.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)