Bewildered Love

Beth urged Kevin to read Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides.  Kevin mandated I read it.  I absolutely love the writing, the atmosphere, and scope of Middlesex.  It's also weighed by the protagonist's reconciliation of an ambiguous sexual and gender identity in a world with little room for that indeterminacy.  There are many moments of levity as I'm speedily moving through this grand tale.  This morning, my mind continues to return to the protagonist's absolute knowledge that his parents love him.  They're sad, somewhat confused, and struggling, but completely in love and connected to their child.

I'm gradually opening my eyes wider to the simultaneous distance and nearness between parents and children.  I am not a parent, but at age 31, I'm beginning to identify more with that end of the spectrum.  With greater sympathy, I'm considering the experience of raising a child away from your own home culture and watching children's quick identification with their surroundings.  What is it like to birth a child who speaks a different language, pronounces a different accent, or can't comprehend you, their parent?

On paper, my lineage is pretty linear.  My grandparents and parents have all inhabited the eastern seaboard of the United States for a few generations.  Interestingly, that geography means less when considering the huge economic and cultural shifts on this land during that time.  My Dad and I certainly have inhabited different planets while coexisting in the same house.  Born in the 1930s as a white man he is to this day absolutely baffled by my politics and lifestyle.  However, I know he loves me.

Reading Middlesex, I came to a passage where the protagonist exposes her heartbreak over not knowing who he was, where he belonged, or what his life looked like, in the company of his parents.  Their sympathy and tenderness was compelling, and touching, as Eugenides illuminated their own longing to understand and truly comfort their child.  I remembered being the protagonist's age, about 15, and visiting my paternal grandmother in her nursing home.  I always loved her, because she was my grandmother and kind.  I never understood her.  She was raised in Arlington, VA by a judge and a mother prone to fainting spells.  Her mother thought it would be cute to raise her and her sister, a year and a half her senior, as twins.  For that reason, my grandmother entered school much earlier than reccommended.  From then on she was considered the "pretty one" while her older sister was deemed the "smart one."

From that world of crossed ankles, isolation, and a woman's sphere, she birthed my father.  My father always said the US in the 1950s worked for him-- I guess so.  He was a white man with access to an undergrad degree at Princeton and a law degree from Harvard, where he was classmates with Ralph Nader. At age 48, he unexpectedly fathered me.  Ha.

Back to age 15, visiting my grandmother.  The previous summer I had pierced my nose while visiting Scotland.  When I returned home my mother literally pulled the earring out of my nose and hid it.  When she went out that night I blasted Ani DiFranco's then-new album, "Little Plastic Castles," through my headphones, cleaned the piercing, sterilized a safety pin, and used that to keep the hole open.  The nose ring ultimately lasted throughout high school.

During that time my long hair was a rainbow.  It was mainly "My So-Called Life" red, but there had been purple streaks, there would be a bleaching, and at one moment cotton candy pink locks.  After careful consideration I had elected to shed it all.  At a friend's house chunks of my hair were released around me until my friends shaved my head.  I went to school the following Monday and was called "Bald-i-locks."  My Mom thought I looked like a cancer patient.  I also was shaving only my head at that point.  My Dad opened the door for me one day and said, "Ladies first."  As a feminist, I glared and replied, "I'm not a lady!"  "No," he answered, "I guess not."

Despite all of that.  Despite a bald, nose-ringed grand-daughter.  Despite a bald, nose-ringed granddaughter in 1996, when all of this was less common than it is now.  Despite.  I remember my grandmother gazing at me and I knew she loved me.  I knew she didn't understand.  She was pretty baffled by the statement I was so obviously making.  She didn't understand my motivations nor what I was communicating to her and the rest of the world.  But she really loved me.

I always think of this when I remember her.  She didn't understand me, but she was capable of loving what she didn't understand.  I find that same comfort watching friends of parents who emigrated, or immigrant friends rearing their children here.  I find that same comfort in friends whose experiences diverged from that of their caregivers for any number of reasons.  We often don't understand, but somehow we can still reach out of our bewilderment and love.