{"id":1386,"date":"2005-07-17T14:19:00","date_gmt":"2005-07-17T19:19:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/?p=1386"},"modified":"2005-07-17T14:19:00","modified_gmt":"2005-07-17T19:19:00","slug":"connection-part-1-of-3-family","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/?p=1386","title":{"rendered":"Connection Part 1 of 3: Family"},"content":{"rendered":"

My parents are high achieving professionals. Mom is a psychiatric social worker, with her own practice, who also helps keep dad’s office running smoothly, and gave more time, between the two parents, to raising three kids, including officiating high school and ymca swimming all around southeastern ohio. Dad is an MD, almost up for one-star general in the Ohio Army National Guard, who has had his own office for a little over 20 years, which has had a changing cast of partners through that time and has previously held down positions as county health commissioner and assistant county coroner. They also had three kids. They live together in Zanesville. Dad is philosophical and forgetful (traits I share). He’s pretty extroverted. Like, every time we went to an airport, he’d see _someone_ he knows. I’m getting to that point myself, I realized recently. Mom thinks I’m more introverted than her, but I’m skeptical of this claim. I think she’s basing it off the before college me, who differs in many ways from the now me. Mom is more practical than dad or myself. She can multiply three digit numbers, accurately, faster than I can punch them into a calculator, but she’s no fan of calculus. <\/p>\n

My older sister, won first in state in her 8th grade science fair, with a project on sulfur in coal, and removal thereof. She graduated with a degree in History from Ohio University, and currently lives with her husband, just outside washington, dc, a hop, skip, and a jump from the Prince George’s Plaza metro station. She’s always been the theatrical one, and the story teller. She was in two plays in Zanesville that I can recall, though I don’t remember anything about them. directed a play she was in at cornell. I think that the SCA is part of the same thing for her. <\/p>\n

My younger sister, , has said to me before that she felt a pressure to perform up to standards of Liz and myself. While well above average on the standardized tests, she didn’t rock the SAT or teacher impression like Liz or myself. That having been said, Jane strikes me as quite capable of getting what she wants out of life, and generally rolling with whatever punches are thrown her way, more so than myself or Liz. She graduated with a double major in english and psych from miami university of ohio, and is currently working in outpatient care, at a “halfway house for crazies”. She lives with her husband in the greenfield neighborhood of pittsburgh, right down the street from the past residences of several friends. She is zany and prone to flights of fancy. She is also an enormous sweetheart, and cares a great deal about animals. (my own attitude is more one of negotiated non interaction. “I agree not to eat you if you’ll leave me alone.”) And yet, I feel like she’s the most grounded of the three of us. She definitely has the best persuasive technique. I don’t know that she could sell ice to eskimoes, but she’d give it a good shot.<\/p>\n

My extended family on my mom’s side, I barely know at all. Mom is the next to youngest of 10. She has nephews and neices older than she is. I have no surviving maternal grandparents, my maternal grandmother having died before I was born, and my grandfather having died a year or two ago. There are only two of mom’s siblings I recall seeing more than a handful of times. Rose Weymouth would be one, married & with grown kids, a grandmother herself, in northwest suburban chicago (pretty close to and , in fact).<\/p>\n

The other I don’t know as well, but he’s the gay Uncle. Michael Langenfeld, last I knew, must have lived somewhere in Springfield, because when we came out to Illinois to see Mom’s dad, I remember seeing a fair amount of him. His boyfriend of many years recently died. <\/p>\n

The rest of my maternal aunts and uncles, I’ve encountered a time or two, and recall not very well. There’s the catholic priest, and the millionaire business owner, but that’s about as well as I know them. They were an 8 hour drive from home as I was growing up. A trip taken about once a year. <\/p>\n

Dad’s side was in southern Illinois. He’s the oldest of ten. In at least approximate order his siblings are:
\nNick, married to Judy, 3 kids: *mumble* (It’s pretty sad that I can’t remember his name, plenty of time spent hanging out with him, relative to my other relatives, anyway), jennifer (now married) and Christy.
\nDennis, single, biological father to a kid I’ve met, atheist
\nSusie married to *mumble*, 3(?) kids, Sarah, Zarah, and … Ali? (converted to Islam)
\nKevin, married to Lisa, 5 kids: bryan, brad, bruce, brittany, brooke
\nJohnny, single, the gay one, goes by Jack. Talked with him in SF, while I was living in berkeley.
\nJames, married to Judy, 2 kids, the ones I’ve seen most recently, and I’m still blanking on their names [Okay, finally got it, Tasha and Shana]. Judy and I had the religious discussion last time I was out there.
\nKathy, married to Steve, at least 5 kids: Amelia, Ben, Catrina, Dion, E*mumble*. I hear she’s the one where my gayness will be the most controversial.
\nClement, Kathy’s twin, single, schizophrenic, former military software guy, did the transcontinental bike ride thing.
\nBilly Joe, the youngest, married, lost his wife, and died in different summers, I think all while I was at cmu. I did not make it to his funeral. <\/p>\n

Dad’s dad died a few years back from heart disease. Granny, dad’s mom is my sole living grandparent. She worked for the daily planet in metropolis, IL, where they have a bit of a superman fetish going on. I think I know her more as a role in life than as a person, because I’m realizing how little I have to say here. She likes to tell stories as well. It’s a way of life on my dad’s side. She’s been very accomodating of my veganism, which kinda surprised me. That may also have been mom’s work, I don’t really know.<\/p>\n

The holes in the names I recall are representative of just how well I know my relatives. I mean, I can picture and remember the voices for Nick’s son, and James’s daughters, but that’s about it.<\/p>\n

Several members of both sides lived in their respective hometowns in central and southern illinois, as I was growing up. Mom’s side doesn’t seem to have nearly as much interaction within themselves as dad’s does. By my memory, while I lived with my folks, we always lived 8-10 hours drive from almost all of them. (Dennis and James lived a little closer, in Kentucky starting in my high school years, maybe). So there was an annual interaction with the extended family, but not much more than that. Hence, they are, in many ways, strangers to me. <\/p>\n

I think I’m probably the member of my generation on dad’s side who is most disconnected from the rest of the extended family. Maybe susie’s kids. Maybe my siblings, as I try to connect with the extended family and they have better developed local lives. Maybe. <\/p>\n

My nuclear family is another story unto itself. My parents have both been very busy. Whenever I think of my childhood, I think of time either alone or with my sisters, more than time with mom or mom and dad. Mom’s had some choice words for dad about his lack of time with the family over the years. Liz was the older, take charge sibling. She had ideas. I was the critic (no wonder gao suits me so well). Jane, well, flights of fancy? I didn’t pay much attention to Jane as we were growing up. I was so fucking introverted. <\/p>\n

Liz and I fought, kicking, biting, scratching type fighting. I don’t remember when we stopped. I do remember that when she went away to college, I rapidly developed an enormous curiosity and desire to follow quickly. I don’t remember fighting with her after that. I remember annoying the shit out of Jane by getting up late and making us late for school all the bloody time and thereby getting her detentions. I remember Liz coming back from far away, and me picking up the notion of a cloak from her. I adapted it to my idea of what it ought to be, and then got becky and mom to make me one. I remember Liz not going back to Cornell and me taking on a nurturing, and, in my mind, protective, role (protecting her from Mom, mostly). I remember still being set on emulating her, and following her switch to Wicca with my own crawl out of Atheism, towards a skeptical animism, eventually slouching into a comfortable agnosticism. It troubled me when she adopted Judaism. Nothing wrong with the religion itself, save perhaps its comparative resemblance to catholicism, just the switch bothered me. Still I respect and have respected for quite some time, everyone’s right to self-determination, even those close to me.<\/p>\n

Both times Jane moved to Pittsburgh, I was living there at the time. I even lived with her, (and a few other friends including ) the first time. And both times, I left town within 3 months of her arriving. Well, the first time, she was leaving too, to go back to school. And neither time did I leave because of her, but it’s still an interesting pattern. I know Jane’s choice in husband has been unpopular with the rest of the family. I’ve only recently started preaching acceptance to mom, we’ll see how that goes. So far, not well. We are all highly opinionated, and difficult to persuade. <\/p>\n

I think with my family, I take a much more impartial, uninvolved attitude than I generally do with friends. Every once in awhile, it’s good to have the company with a history on me that goes so far back. But I generally get uncomfortable spending too much time with family. I’m getting along much better with my parents these days, but it’s still the case that my nuclear family, the ones that have a great deal of total time, not just a long span with occasional pockets of having seen me, is not terribly nearby. Plus, they’re all married. And that tends to take some time. =)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1386","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1386","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1386"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1386\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1386"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1386"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1386"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}