On Family, etc.

The day before Neil Armstrong made the first human moon landing, my parents were married in a small Catholic Church on the Air Force base in Langley, Virginia. My mother was twenty-one years old. My father was twenty-two. Following the ceremony, a formal reception was held at the Officers’ Club. The cake was cut, champagne was sipped. It was a seamless event – one that never revealed how there was no money for a honeymoon, that the wedding rings hadn’t arrived on time, and that within a week my parents would return almost every wedding gift they had received in exchange for cash. Somehow, the pomp of that evening obscured the fact that, because of my parents’ choice to marry at such a young age, their families were ready to cast them off.

My youthful mother and father were embarking on a new and difficult phase in their lives, completely alone. They packed everything they owned into a two-door Opal, unknowingly leaving their checking account overdrawn when they drove north. For the next eighteen months, they lived meagerly in an apartment on the shore of Lake Erie, owning only a card table, two folding chairs, two army cots, and a turntable. They ate each meal off of the fine china given as a wedding gift by my father’s grandmother.

From then on, every possession acquired by my mother and father was earned through their collective toil; every relationship was painstakingly forged and cultivated from scratch. They were everything to each other. They waited over fifteen years to have me – their only child. My parents had adopted a new and intensely small definition of “family,” one that I never had reason to question while growing up. It was always just me and mom and dad. It wasn’t until I was older, until I gained a more familiar understanding of other families through friends and boyfriends, that I realized just how estranged I was – not only literally from members of my extended family, but also from the concept of the extended family itself.

Over the past few years I have struggled to figure out how to begin forging relationships with members of my extended family who I hardly know. And very recently, the necessity of these efforts has become more obvious than ever before. About one month ago, my parents and I learned that our tiny nuclear family might actually be larger than we had thought. A letter from a 39-year old man living in Virginia suggested that my dad might have fathered a son even before he and my mother were engaged. Yesterday, a DNA-test confirmed that this suggestion is, in fact, true. I have a half-brother.

The past few weeks have been a pretty emotional time for my family, especially for my father, but this experience has indubitably brought us closer together. With that context in mind, I am so excited to have this opportunity to get to know my half-brother, Michael. From the little bit that I have learned about him so far, I already know that I am a lucky woman to have even met such an obviously kind, forthright and interesting person, and am looking forward to seeing my tiny family grow a little bit. I have always really wanted a sibling.

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In other, less dramatic, news . . . Thanks to Justin, for sending me suggestion as to how Zizek might fit into my diagram project -

“I made you a diagram to help w/ critical theory.”

And Happy Birthday (Friday!) to the #1 LadyStunna, Jessica!!!
Jessica is known for being an amazing friend and a fierce competitor in online Scrabble, for her valiant attempts to catch indoor bats with borrowed designer coats, and for smelling of gin. With her ability to ruin anyone in a dance contest, she is currently taking Boston by storm. I miss you darlin!

With Edward and JFK on her last night in Ann Arbor.

Me, Jessica and Becky in Jessica’s old Chicago apartment,
New Years 2007. (In a bit of strange coincidence, Jessica and Becky
actually graduated high school with my fellow AIR, Arielle.)

In other news, if the fire alarm goes off in this building one more time, perpetrators should plan on being beheaded, swiftly and violently.

Even more superficially, I need a haircut.