We went back to Ohio for a visit. Chrissie Hynde notwithstanding, at least some parts of my city were not gone, though on balance, a lot of it was.
For the first time in probably about 10 years, my sister, my brother and I were all in the same place. There might be a long story behind that, but I'm not really sure. My family is like that.
I was about to write a quick gloss on the general situation, but that's not what I wanted to write about, so to heck with it. I'll just say that I have a brother 11 years older than me, and a sister 5 years older than me, and that, despite their calendar ages, I still insist on being 28.
What I wanted to write about is how weird it is to suddenly connect with all of them in this mediated way.
I'm connected to a few family members on Facebook, and posts to this antique blog eventually find their way to Facebook, so everything I write here or on Facebook is open to their inspection. My sister-in-law even mentioned, while we were in Ohio, that she has looked at a couple things I've posted, and a few of them she isn't too sure about.
So, all the stuff I post about erotic experience, about the weird food I cook and eat, about politics in higher ed, about union activism, about the whole world I occupy on a daily basis that has very very little to do with anything they knew or understood about me as a kid in Ohio... All of that is what they might read on any given day.
Today, for instance, I worked on the paper I'm hoping to present at the Back To The Things Themselves conference in New Brunswick this summer. The paper is about erotic experience, and today I wrote about being seduced by peaches.
Tomorrow it's as likely as not I'll be writing here about academic politics again, since I was just at the CFA meeting last weekend, and I also received confirmation today that my schedule for Spring is likely to change, with one week before classes start.
It's strange to think of my family reading any of this. I wonder what they might think of it, or of me, or whether they let it pass without wondering.
3 comments:
I think it's not so unusual for family members to have no idea who you are. I have the same in my family. My brother is completely clueless who I am and my father is only just barely starting to figure it out. I think that there's an unconscious and completely misguided sense of arrogance that most people have when it comes to knowing who their family members are. (I know EVERYTHING about him - he's my son! Etc.) We recognize that our non-family members (friends, significant others, etc) can change over time but not that our family members can. But when it comes to our family members, they're such an integral part of our own identities that it's difficult to register the changes.
I would pay good money to have no idea who I am. Wait, what?
Joke #1: Many people do pay good money to have no idea who they are.
Joke #2: Many other people would also pay good money to have no idea who you are.
Post a Comment