It is the rub against those who are different that allows you to reflect, reject, and re-find yourself. I am different from my family. After going there for Xmas and seeing the baby-centrism, I am championing childless folks who mountaineer. I see this stance for what it is - a reaction, a rejection of the belief as real as the one put unquestioningly on the top of the Christmas tree for all to adore.
I can't look at it with adoration. I am not appended to a child. And when one doesn't have a baby hanging from the teat, one is considered not quite whole at my parents' house. The conversations are coos and comparisons and proud parents, rivaling siblings, fingers tucked into suckling mouths.
Please. I like the babies. I love my family. But I do not want what they embrace. And I object to being a shadow floating around the edges of conversation in a home that should live up to the "There's no place like home for the holidays" adage. I am probably not the only embittered, fatter, sugared-up American who is realizing that the thousands of miles of travel and consternation over the right gifts were misplaced.
What is the answer? To continue to rail against them? (Never aloud. Good daughters dasn't.) To scorn their close-mindedness and lack of reflection and perception? To resent them and swear to never do x, y, and z again!? Or, to feel I don't measure up and try to stitch a spot in the family fabric for single aunties - and feel worse when the thread pops out? Probably healthy doses of both have already been done. Maybe even unhealthy doses.
Should I review my life choices and assure myself that lives like mine count and don't float on the periphery of everyone's awareness? I could argue that lives like mine are better, but I don't believe that's the point. I believe the point is that I've brushed up again against the other, people whose fundamental beliefs do not match mine. They are sandpaper against my skin - Mom and Little Sister the coarse grit, Dad and Big Sister the fine. Chafing and grinding.
They remove the detritus and I surface. I am an unmarried, childless-by-choice woman who mountaineers. I will not have children, I will not devote myself to the examination of their every (bowel) movement and mouthing. I am not an appendage to someone else, nor are they to me. I quite like my own arms and legs and my thoughts and ideas. I could add to my family - their lives and conversations in so many ways - if the rapture in burbling and bawling babies would stop for just a moment. Oh, for the moment!
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