FAMILY AFFAIRS

After the seriousness of my last column, I was all prepared to tackle a much lighter topic. Then my computer suffered a spectacular crash, which I still haven’t recovered from, and the topic I’d been working on got lost forever. But since I really didn’t want to spend this space on my computer woes, I had to come up with something else.

Thank god for family functions. If nothing else provides me with fodder for writing, these do without question.

I spent this past weekend in the Washington DC area at a cousin’s bar mitzvah. The event itself was actually very nice. Bar and bat mitzvahs these days are often nothing more than a ridiculous spectacle, an opportunity for the kid’s parents to spend an obscene amount of money impressing their relatives, friends and business clients (or potential clients) by getting the fanciest food, the most lavish decorations, and generally forgetting about the poor kid who actually has to read a section from the Torah and give a token speech which is usually read haltingly off of the page, as said kid has far too much stage fright to actually make eye contact.

But this one was a low-key affair. My cousin passed the speech test, especially after the nerve-wracking moment when he realized that page 2 of his speech was something completely different, so after his moment of freaking out, he recovered nicely once the real speech was located. And managed to make the entire congregation laugh several times in the process. The evening meal was delicious and not overly plentiful, which was a good thing because even in my still-somewhat-newly thin state, I go to these things to eat. And eat some more. So I didn’t really miss the absence of a huge buffet or a decadent sweet table. The 3-piece band was good, and didn’t get overly noisy save for a couple of numbers. And none of my cousin’s classmates, from what I could tell, engaged in the time-honored process of putting all sorts of glop into soft drinks to come up with disgusting concoctions. None of them were in any state of inebriation, either.

And it was the first time I sang in public since, well, I can’t even remember (no, the impromptu performance at Bouchercon doesn’t count. I mean actually having a band back me up and singing for real.) Which is rather sad, because now I realize how much I missed performing for an audience Note to self: once this whole school business is over, gotta get some singing gigs. Even if I get as sick and tired of singing Bei Mir Bist Du Schon as all the other entertainers before me.

But, then there’s the family, of course. Most of which I don’t see very often, because even though many live in cities reasonably close to Manhattan, they have their kids and grandchildren to deal with so I don’t register on the family radar that often. Or if I do, it’s as My Mother’s Daughter (since the family in question is all from the maternal side. My father’s family, for the most part, I don’t have that much to do with at all.) So every couple of years, at whatever kid was getting bar or bat mitzvahed, the relatives would descend or I’d travel to some city or another and be remarked upon for a) how much I’ve grown b) what I’m doing in school or c) something else that I’ve probably forgotten.

This time though, I registered bigtime. For starters, most of the family have not seen me since I moved to New York. So even though I, my parents, and some chosen few are so over the fact that I am my current slim graduate-student self instead of the unconfident, much fatter version, most of them were kind of surprised. Suddenly, I wasn’t just My Mother’s Daughter (MMD), but an attractive, intelligent person in my own right. Which had many good points— open invitations to spend weekends at <insert relative here>’s houses, lots of compliments, good discussions. But, there were bad points. And somewhat annoying points.

By graduating from MMD status into being A Person Of Note, the Pandora’s Box has now been blasted open. Now, when this had never even been hinted at before, I must deal with the single girl’s plight, which I’ll relate as
follows:

“So, Sarah, would it be all right if I gave my best friend’s friend’s son your phone number? He’s an airline pilot, and Orthodox, so he’s having a lot of trouble finding girls who understand his job and still are religious enough.”

My stock answer is to smile, nod, and offer said phone number. Hell, that’s what I did when the chairman of the Science Department offered (well, pitched would be a better word) to set me up with his nephew. Did I ever hear from the guy? Hell no. But since I have nothing to lose, I might as well not rock the boat. And I don’t want to seem rude. Even if the assumptions made in the above quote are so many that I’m about to lose count.

Then there was the point during the Saturday luncheon when my great-aunt introduced me to what seemed to be a very nice fellow and basically asked him to be my date for the night shindig. I talked to him for maybe 3 minutes and then a couple of my other cousins descended on me and I never saw the poor guy again.

But at least I didn’t have matchmakers attempt to arrange anything, as was the case at the last family function I attended. I explained to the hopeful woman who was eager to share my attributes with potential Ultra-Orthodox singles that I was looking for someone intelligent. “I can find that,” she replied. Then I explained further that I would like someone who appreciated intelligent women.

There was a noticeable pause before she replied, “Well, I can think of a few.”

But I digress, and I’m not here to mock viable rituals. And the point is, I can deal with my relatives doing this. They want me to be happy and settled or whatever. My cousins’ children are absolutely adorable and I love playing with them and spinning them around and teaching them how to be subversive. I just figure I don’t really need to adopt that state of being, not just yet.

But there was one relative whom, I have to admit, I wasn’t too thrilled being around. To protect the guilty, I’ll call him A.

A has been a shadowy presence since I was little. His parents had not been overly fortunate with their children; the eldest is a recovering schizophrenic (though thanks to medication, he’s regaining, slowly, his talented musician former self) and though the other two children are happy and settled, they went through various traumas and issues throughout their lives. A was a fairly talented musician as well, but didn’t react well to authority and rules and the like. And being of that particular generation, he embraced hippiedom and all it had to offer. But, unlike the vast majority of boomers, he never grew out of it. At fifty-something, he busks around Europe with some act or another, “dating” (I use the term loosely) the same aged- women he was probably seeing twenty-five years ago.

A’s the kind of guy who appeals to children, and he certainly did when I first remember meeting him, just before I turned six. He stayed at our house and taught me (or attempted to) how to balance things on my nose and how to juggle. At my sixth birthday party, he entertained me and my friends with his juggling act. I thought he was the coolest damn relative I ever had.

Problem is, he was exactly the same at my bat mitzvah, when he “surprised” everybody by doing the same act. I had no prior notice until a friend of mine pointed to me and said “look what’s going on,” so I looked and there was a throng of people watching A juggle seven or eight different things at once. It was fine, but…I got the sinking feeling that the reason he was doing this wasn’t for my benefit, but his own.

As I got older my opinion of him grew more negative. He didn’t treat his parents very well; they were getting older, and though they have tremendous energy, there’s only so much to go around, especially to a prodigal son who still expects his parents to accept him the way he is. Frankly, acceptance isn’t the issue, as it will never happen. He’s not going to grow up; they love him, as he’s their son, but when he stays put for extended periods of time and doesn’t help and complains why he’s not more famous or self- sufficient and needs help from said parents, it’s not going to inspire much sympathy.

So this was all on display, never mind that it seems I’ve now reached his acceptable age range. Which was a rather unpleasant surprise. So I’m trying to keep my distance while not appearing to be completely rude, because it’s not like I’m going to see him for another few years anyway.

But as I was thinking about this business earlier today, I realized that A bears a lot of resemblance to one of my idols, Shel Silverstein. Shel was a genius at many things, but he led a nomadic life; although he loved his children, he wasn’t exactly the greatest father and certainly wasn’t stable. When the mother of his then-five-year-old daughter died, custody was an issue, but Shel didn’t even contest anything—he let his daughter’s aunt and uncle raise the girl, and had occasional visitation rights. Which made sense, as he was spending much of his time with Hugh Hefner and his band of Merry Bunnies. Who, of course, collectively stayed the same age as Hef, Shel and the boys aged and filled out.

So why does Shel fascinate me while A inspires repulsion? Is it because A is related to me and so I see firsthand his behavior and its effect on his family? Is it because Shel wrote amazing lyrics, poems, plays, and countless other things, and built up a sizable fortune and actually made something of himself? It could be many things but I suspect it’s a personality issue. I didn’t know the man, but I’ve never come across anyone who didn’t have a positive opinion of Shel Silverstein, from colleagues to those who performed his works to his publishers to his family and even ex-lovers. A, at best, seems to inspire confusion. Or ambivalence. Eventually a person has to take some responsibility for his own life, and I suspect A never will.

There were many, many other family dynamics on display, which I won’t get into here. But they belong to any branch of any family. Mine’s certainly no more or less unique. But they are mine—warts and all. I know the vast majority would, should emergencies arise, be there for me, as I’d be for them if I could. Although most of them don’t really get what I do, who I am, they’ll still likely be there several decades from now, when what I do and who I am may be drastically different.

So I’m looking forward to the next family function, be it a wedding, bar mitzvah, or whatever. Maybe not the funerals. But it’ll be good to catch up and see how we are all doing several years from now. And no doubt there’ll be good food to eat.

Sarah Weinman
11 November 2002