Family
Wherein Our
Heroine, as Usual, Mulls Over a Definition.
When I was a child, I had a fairly
typical child's view of family. Crayola stick-figure people, proudly standing
in front of an improbably-colored house. Mommy, Daddy, Me. There was a vague
notion that another small stick-person might come to join us one day. It
happened to other people, after all, it might well happen to us. But for the
time being, MommyDaddyMe was a fixed constellation, a part of a larger system
that also contained star-clusters like GrammyGrampa, and
UncleAuntCousin.
I remember
one kid in my first grade class whose parents were divorced. It was so outside
my six-year experience that it was frightening, an unknown condition that was
potentially contagious. As time went on, of course, it happened more and more
often as the mid-70's wound down into the late 70's and all through the 80's.
Other people's constellations were more like volatile molecules, whizzing around
and bouncing off of one another. MommyDaddyMe, though, we continued. We mostly
stood still like one of those time-lapse movies where people flow like a spastic
river around a statue or monument. Everything else changes. The monument
endures.
I like to say that my
life turned into an after-school special when I was 26. It used to be a way to
deflect unwanted sympathy - make people laugh so they don't feel they have to
try to figure out how to make it better. Now it's just something I say: an old,
tired laugh-line I have a hard time letting go of. The fact was, the monument
was gone, and its component elements entered the shifting, passing flow.
Entering the speedy world of
the molecule after spending years in the still, changeless silence of space can
bring on some sharp shocks. About 25 years after I had stopped wondering about
the possibility of another little stick-figure, I suddenly had a stepbrother,
five years my junior. This does strange things to the part of your brain that
controls definitions. People ask me now if I have any siblings and my automatic
answer is still, "No." And then, "Well, sort of." After all, it's pretty silly
to call Brian "My father's second wife's son" when there's a perfectly good
three-syllable word for his place in my constellation. At the same time, using
the bare term "stepbrother" seems disingenuous. We didn't grow up together - I
didn't get to lord it over him until he got bigger than me (I could say he's my
made-to-order big little brother). There's something strange about calling
someone your "brother" when you've never lived in the same household. Yet
anything else is
inefficient.
Whatever I call
him, though, I am fond of him. We have a quirky, funny sort of friendship that
I have grown to value. I look forward to the years ahead, when perhaps the word
stepbrother will come without the air quotes. He comes from his home in Florida
to visit today, and I am looking forward to it.
Posted: Friday - August 20, 2004 at 07:51 AM
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