(no subject)

[ricevermicelli]

Since I became pregnant, I have heard more and more family stories. Failed oil speculations. Failed real estate speculations. Failed stock market speculations. (Apparantly, the main thing my ancestors did early in the 20th century was make bad investments.) Sordid divorces (nothing to Jeri Ryan, but quite shocking for the 20s). Suicides. Sixteen different ways to fail at marriage (besides suicide and sordid divorce). Bizarre coping strategies for bad situations and the love letters that come out of them.

The bright spot in this catalog of human disaster is that I no longer find the older generation intimidating. It is unlikely that I will screw up as thoroughly as some of them did, and it is almost a relief to know that I didn't come from normal people.

Comments

[chessdev.livejournal.com]

8-)

Nothing more frightening like the fear we'll turn out like our parents? 8-)

[ricevermicelli.livejournal.com]

There are worse ways to turn out than like my parents. Like my great-grandparents, for example. That would be much worse.

[katkt.livejournal.com]

and it is almost a relief to know that I didn't come from normal people

What on earth makes you think all this sordidness and failure and various disasters is abnormal? I think the lack of them is what would be truly abnormal.

Of course, people have stopped calling me an idealist (really, in my youth..) and started calling me a cynic, so my opinion might be questionable.

Family history gives me flashbacks...

[valkyriefire.livejournal.com]

When I started in classes for my MSW, I had to learn how to do a genogram, which is sort of like a sociological family tree. I was assigned 5 of them over the course of my first 2 years, 4 of the 5 with different themes. The fifth one assigned - the sexual history genogram - was the final straw. I learned much much more about my family than I ever wanted to know.

On the plus side, divorce is almost unheard of (two total in 5 generations on both sides). Then again, we have a LOT of unplanned, premarital pregnancies and shotgun weddings on both sides of the family.

I never thought your fam was "normal" - just better at coping with its highs and lows than most.

Re: Family history gives me flashbacks...

[ricevermicelli.livejournal.com]

I never thought my parents were normal, but I thought they were just weird. I attributed all their oddities to the fact that they were geeks before geek was cool. My parents are solo Tolkien fans, and while I find their loneliness in this sort of heartbreaking, there's no way in hell I'd bring them to Boskone. The minute they meet my friends, and realize what I've been doing with my spare time, my life crashes into The Epidemiologist, and I will never know peace again.

Anyway. I was wrong. They aren't just weird. They have reasons for being that way.

Re: Family history gives me flashbacks...

[valkyriefire.livejournal.com]

Parents and real life don't mix. Mine have enough problems with the parts they know about. The rest would just break their wee ickle heads.

Ah, weirdom for reasons is still weirdom. Mine have no excuses. They grew up in Wisconsin with working class, salt-of-the-earth parents.

Re: Family history gives me flashbacks...

[tisana.livejournal.com]

This genogram thing sounds fascinating...in the nuance that means "horrifying." Yeek. I'm not sure I even want my friends' sexual history, certainly not family. What were the other themes?

Re: Family history gives me flashbacks...

[valkyriefire.livejournal.com]

The first two were generic - birth and death dates, how they died, when they died, marriages, divorces, children, miscarriages, abortions, diseases, relationships to one another, mental illness, etc.

The next one was for Family Therapy and focused on relationships using the Bowenian model of interaction - not too difficult, just depressing.

The one after that was a social "disease" focus, looking at how mental illness and physical ailments progressed in a family. It didn't work all that well because neither side of my family has a theme death/ailment. We have a smattering of cancer, some heart disease, one Alzheimers, a couple of accidents, one pneumonia, one Lou Gherig's disease, one Parkinson's disease. Even genetic illnesses don't seem to get passed down very often. I had to focus on the alcoholism that gallops through both sides. It was a gimme, really.

The last one was the sexual genogram and yes, interviewing your prude of a grandma, your lying prude of a grandma, about her sexual history is not as fun as it might sound.

[tisiphone.livejournal.com]

A defining moment of my transition from childhood to adulthood was finding out that my grandfather married and divorced before my grandmother and he married - and that they divorced because she refused to have sex, but wanted him only to jerk off while she watched.

Yeah... I'm still trying to bleach my brain from that one.

[ukelele.livejournal.com]

One of the most valuable things I've learned from teaching, particularly at a boarding school, is that everyone screws up as parents, and usually it's OK -- kids are resilient.

Also there are some levels of screwup that are really, really, really not OK, but neither I nor my friends are likely to ever achieve them. In fact, we're likely to recoil in revulsion upon even thinking of them. (Example: writing your kid's life in advance, and loving the kid precisely insofar as he or she measures up. I see that one a lot. Or...how about sending your kid to boarding school, as a five-day boarder even, and then telling the residential staff you can't have him home one weekend because he no longer has a bedroom in your house. Sixth grader. Yeah. See, we're not going to screw up that badly.)

[ricevermicelli.livejournal.com]

Aaaaagh! People who pull that crap on their college students piss me off. I can't imagine the bludgeoning I'd feel the need to do if a twelve year-old was involved.

The preferred method of screwing one's children in my family appears to have been to leave town. Screw-ups not involving abandonment center on marriage and money. So far as I can tell, the only sensible financial move my great-grandfather ever made was to join a union that offered college scholarships to children of members who got high enough grades, and pay his dues.

[supercheesegirl.livejournal.com]

...to know that I didn't come from normal people.

Was there ever any doubt on this point?

[ricevermicelli.livejournal.com]

See above, re: I thought they were just weird.

[graceo.livejournal.com]

Coming up with a personal accounting/budgeting worksheet and then sharing it with your future wife is hardly a bizarre way to cope with a family history of legal disputes over debt.

And I think you may be underestimating the sordidness of the divorce. Still nothing compared to Jeri Ryan, but there was mention in the papers of a dispute over twin beds, spanking, and behavioral contracts as part of an attempted reconciliation. Apparently, the case kept California entertained for some time.

[cos]

It's almost as though being pregnant marks you as a real adult, qualified to be initiated into the fraternity?