Meeting Yourself at the Family Reunion

There is nothing quite like bumping into old versions of yourself you thought you had outgrown. Not only are you surprised, but you next feel sheepish, even embarrassed. Like meeting the beloved but slightly neurotic aunt in the hallway at a family reunion. She’s part of the family—so she must be loved—but it’s sometimes a bit painful to befriend or welcome her each year. You always hope she had made other plans.

This week offered opportunity for such an encounter all within my own mind. In what follows, I’d like to invite you into a mental soundtrack, hopefully for some amusement, but also for a very specific purpose: to shine light on the white noise—actually, multi-colored-aged-yellow-and-black-white noise—many of us have to quiet inside ourselves even in encounter with a friend or colleague, let alone another whom we might describe as ‘other’ in some way. I’m not referring just to those of us in highly homogenous settings—rural towns, ubran enclaves—but also well-sensitized, liberally-minded, interculturally-adept persons within institutions of higher learning.  The cultural noise can be impressive. Today I find myself astonished we do as well as we do, most times. The noise for me in this brief interlude includes a naïve upbringing in homogenous community (Ohio small-town, in my case), some cultural memes of the South, and lastly, a general tendency to overthink as an academic gifted with intensive affect.

The short version of the story is that I had lunch with a big-brother-ish professional colleague whom I’ll call Jed. I thought at noon. He thought at 12:30. In the end, it didn’t matter and we had a marvelous time. Like meeting the favorite cousin you can’t wait to see at family reunions and afterward wonder why you don’t get together more often. Though I’ve known him for quite a while now, always feeling a sense of resonance with him, this was the first time I’d met him in his work as a scholar. I could finally see in more systematic form, in his own writing voice, some of what the resonances had been about beyond our collegial respect and shared-ironic joviality. The longer version of the story? The week’s duration from the casually-phrased, e-mail-invite to him to the marvelously smiling lunch was accompanied by an out-dated soundtrack, increasingly shrill and grating as the days wore on.  

Allow me to introduce you to my slightly neurotic but beloved “aunt,” the lead-singer for this movie muzak. “Are you sure he’d want to see you?” she asked. “You have so little in common in your line of work, after all.” As the days wore on, her voice became more and more compelling. My institutional setting offers me maximum flexibility, even camouflage, for the real work I am learning to be about, but it’s small and struggling. No prestige, sometimes painful after living immersed in it in previous professional locations. His setting is an establishment institution of higher education—high money, prestige, external resources (if perhaps not internal ones…can’t tell). Perfect for what he does, but also with golden hand-cuffs of such settings. Small-town naivete kicked in with remarkable force, harmonized with professionalized notions of business assessments of success.

To interpret the lack of response to my inquiry, I then began to wonder whether I had offended him in some way. Had I unknowingly done something to disrespect him? “You’re white,” she added, picking up my cue. “He’s not, so perhaps it’s a race thing. Surely you did something like that”, she finished in a whisper, like speaking quietly would soften the blow, hide the imposition of whiteness that tears at earth, body, and more. As the days wore on, I began to catalogue any memory I could recall, assessing it for potential mistakes, miscommunications, and more. As I read his book, I found myself using it to imagine potential slights or faults I had unknowingly committed, imposed. These only got louder while staying in a posh, very white, cold-monied hotel. The de-humanization in such spaces, particularly when adjacent to large, monied, establishment institutions of higher education, hits old scars, now accompanied by nausea. Shrill memes, slight nausea.

“Sometimes your intense level of affect is simply too much for academics,” she whined next. “We know you can’t do anything about that, but he must be avoiding you because of it. Perhaps you experienced a closer connection or resonance with him than there really is? Oh, I know. You imposed it. That’s what you did.” When she got here, with this tone I’ve recognized for nearly three decades, I began to lose patience with her. In an act of mental defiance, complete with mental Bose-headphones,  I simply called him and inquired whether there was time for a chat, particularly as I was now into his book. We joshed like we always do, laughed together, and set up a time for lunch. “See?” I scolded my aunt, staring her down into a quiet murmur. And lunch was like it always is—filled with laughter, mutual respect and perhaps a bit of awe at one another’s work, audacious as we both are.

The sad thing about all this—which admittedly some might call navel-gazing or solipsistic ramblings—is that it has almost nothing to do with either Jed or me. It has little, if anything, to do with the professional history we’ve had or the sense of collegiality we may share today immersed as we are in resonant work across different educational ecologies. For nearly seven days, my mind was rehearsing and captivating attention with the plots and soundtracks of others, old stories, historically-received ways of interpreting actions in social spaces.

Mental chatter was captivated first by the oldest within my own history—small-town naivete I’ve been struggling to erase ever since I left the town of my youth. I may be more socially adept than I used to be, even enough to succeed in well-monied environments of privilege. But awareness of the economic, cultural, and class-chasms never leaves my subconscious. When cognitive dissonance between my expectations and mundane events in my life unfolds, my mind goes to that quagmire first.

Being in the South, quite aware of being in the South, and spending a week in a posh inn with bellmen, mostly dead-white-men in pictures all down the entry hallway, a golf-store, and over-priced breakfast options? Noise of privilege, Southern money, and black-white racial discourse became shrill in what would otherwise not have seemed remotely plausible to me. Jed is both a master at the “race” discourse in our environments, and critical of it. So much so that he encourages shared hope in mutual transcendence of it in God-given demands of intimacy. Largely due to shared hearts, resonant wisdom and spiritual disciplines of laughter, I’ve rarely if ever felt the discourse come between us, though both of us are well aware of it.

One of the most significant learnings for me in this reflection, therefore, is that being here, amidst days of solitary work, it did come between us, even if only in my own mind. I allowed my own mental chatter to cloud what I knew to be true about him, about me, about the professional sharing we have experienced together. Something in me needs to confess, I guess, though a sad smile of realized absolution accompanies the confession. Even when it has nothing to do with either involved, there are yet times to note the powerful presence of others’ plots and soundtracks, others’ stories, others’ ways of interpreting social actions lodged deeply inside each of us. Completing a bit of reflection while still here allows leaving it here with that sad smile.

Awareness of all this, ultimately reprieve from it, arrived when an old trope entered the mental chatter with well-weakened thrall to captivate: intense affect within academic environments. For nearly two decades, though arguably as long as I’ve had Pennsylvania-Deutsch uncles and a father of intellectualized-affect, I have had to ‘translate’ this gift and burden that I know in intense affect alongside substantial intellect. At times, the gift connects me with vocation, spiritual friends, innovative collaborations beyond all expectation. Other times, it ruptures collegial relations in misread social cues or subconscious requests—demands?—for shared intensities that are impossible, politely avoided, or at least distanced. Because this dimension has stretched and challenged me for as long as I can remember, because it’s such an old trope of my mind, it (blessedly) instigated self-reflective reconsideration, ultimately the phone call resulting in lunch itself.

So what to do with the slightly neurotic, outdated “aunt” who is actually an old version of myself with all her wounds and scars? Honor her presence, even welcome and care for her in the difficulties she has had to endure. Ultimately, sit her down with an old magazine that would comfort her and ask her to rest there quietly. She has much to learn from us “younger cousins.” She needs to know she will always have a place at our family reunions, a place at the table, but she must honor us too with her silence as well as her presence.

Family will always be family, in other words, but more of us need to live and model new life beyond her old stories. Cup of tea, cousins?

Experimenting with 'Family': Costly Choices against Tribalism

Experimenting with ‘family’ costs, but as a human family, we may have little choice but to proceed in this way.

I come from a tenaciously loyal, overly-educated, (fairly) emotionally-intelligent family, at least on my dad’s side. My mother’s side brings a different set of gifts, though she would demur from naming any of them. Mostly, she’d agree that from that side of the family, we got her, and she’s more than enough. But my mom’s side of the family offers—in my experience—an edgy humor, a tenacity to confront difficulty and survive, an awareness of human need, independence when necessary and mutual dependence when possible. Because of this diversity of gifts, however, when I think of ‘family’ in these reflections, I tend to lean toward my dad’s side. Relationships have been developed there. I know that side better, more fully in foibles and graces. And that side of ‘us’ is tenacious about ‘family,’ educated into confidence, and intensely self-reflective…though perhaps less about emotional dimensions of life than we might be. A couple of us have explored extending our loyalty of ‘family’ to others outside our origins, which seemed a natural and important thing to do at the time. Both of us have learned—are learning—that experimenting with ‘family’ is costly in all kinds of ways we never expected.

My own experience appears in several places here. Upon a startlingly intentional, intense spiritual friendship, my husband and I explored the notion of quasi-adopting two young women from our broader community, the daughters of this spiritual friend. We didn’t pursue it formally, in any means, but we did go so far as to craft a couple signs of covenantal belonging—a ‘swan’ ring for one of the girls, an anam-cara ring gifted by family and friends for the mother as a surprise on her birthday. In speech, the friend and I played with various family titles of affection and commitment, some intimate nicknames and others more formal role names—partner, and the like. As each of us grew in the companionship of the other, none of these had staying power except now, perhaps, companion. While this mother and I have little to no contact anymore, I will probably always count her as a companion. Her impact on my life was at archetypal and spiritually-intimate levels. She’ll always be a part of me—who she was then will always companion me—even if I never see or talk to her again. But none of the ‘titles’ or nicknames we explored remains.

I remain aware of the costs, however. The explorations in this fashion made it difficult for us to allow each other room to grow. We became overly dependent, overly focused upon one another. Our understandings of who we were, with attempted solidity in nicknames or roles, grew ever more inaccurate and disparate from each other. Neither of us could track this disparity of trajectories to see what was happening, though sustaining presence with one another grew increasingly difficult, to the point of impossible. Our experiment of inclusive-familial ties failed to sustain cohesion, regardless of our overt intentions. Both of us knew the words we had said, intentions we had shared, but the friendship—as it was—came to an end, decisively if gently. I still hold her in my mind with a sense of affection, but confirmation has come again and again that this was the healthy path of new life—dissolution of covenantal belonging, as we had crafted it together. One of the most costly things was relinquishing this tenacious understanding of ‘family’ we had professed between us. We were ‘family’ for a time. We are no longer. Given my tenacious loyalty about ‘family,’ I still cringe when I acknowledge that poignant truth.

Another in my family has explored extending herself and her ‘family’ to include a quasi-adopted daughter. The others in the family, though they need not have, accompanied them both in this decision and welcomed this someone new as ‘family.’ At a time of a wedding, even the extended family of aunts, uncles,  and cousins welcomed this new ‘daughter’ into the fold as ‘family.’ Nothing legal, but a couple things formal, between those in attendance. This was a beautiful signal of extending the ‘tribe,’ I thought. This was ‘family’ at its best.

Until it wasn’t. Fundamental disagreement—by which I mean disagreement about the fundamental underpinnings of the relationship, like trust, intimacy, vulnerability, and more—now tears at the fabric of the ‘family’ welcome. The strongest link that had invited the young woman in no longer holds, at least in the same way. The rest of us are now perplexed about how to honor our loyalties to family. Are we ‘family’ or are we not? Does that change our behavior? Should it? And the quasi-mother struggles now against her own convictions, her sense of integrity, her need of health and more. What is the healthy course of action for her, when her ‘daughter’ transgresses in a way she finds untenable? As seen from the outside, here, she is bound by the archetypal frame of ‘motherhood’ whether she wants it anymore or not. Using the frame of ‘family’ has been costly, for all of us.

I’m of a mind that the experiments have been extraordinarily valuable, however. I have ultimately more respect for the archetypal ‘hold’ of ‘family of origin’ relationships than I ever used to—father, mother, sister, brother, husband, wife. There is something completely unconscious but exacting about these relationships—these roles—such that any who venture into relational explorations, innovations, needs to respect them in compensatory ways. In ways beyond cognitive awareness or expectation.

In a similar vein, I have much more respect for the biological sway we bring to our closest relationships, a sway that will require tremendous over-compensation if we are to extend human awareness to lovingkindness—being kinfolk—across traditional-tribal boundaries in the future. What would the world be like if we really lived into the notion of a ‘human family’? A healthy family, I mean. One that functioned for the good of all, in provision of physical, emotional, spiritual needs, in growth of consciousness for deeper and deeper learning about who we are and who we can become in this gracious eco-system we call home? Is it even possible to consider a world that does not require some to lose for a few to win? Maybe not, but the biological impediments to such utopian ideas are, in and of themselves, huMONgous. The family tribal structure has existed for millions of years for good reason, not least of which is the survival of the fittest over sacrifice/demise of the unfit. Part of the learning here, in the end, is don’t mess with Mother Nature.

But mightn’t learning to be 'family' across non-traditional bonds increase our ability to steward our world, respecting Mother Nature and living in harmony with her? Mightn’t ‘messing with Mother Nature’ in this way be a path toward living in greater harmony with others, whomever they be?

In the big picture, I say yes, but in the interim, it feels so impossible. Growth of any kind is costly, but emotional-relational growth can be excruciating. To sustain family ties across non-family origins is requiring new thinking, new reacting, intentional compensation for biological-reactions toward greater goals of new-family-cohesion. Sheer acts of will, in other words, but acts for which health and new life must be the goals. Not any sense of ego-pride or regret for having chosen new family poorly, but health and new life. For my part, the path of new life and health required dissolution of covenantal belonging, dissolution of ‘family ties.’ For my dear family-member-by-marriage, confronting the archetypal power of the Mother-Daughter bond? Time will tell what brings new life for her, for them both in the crucible of growth.

Maybe experimenting with ‘family’ like this is one of the new, best vehicles for the development of greater human awareness, regardless of whether cohesion remains or not. Maybe decades from now, more of us will know how to welcome even more of us into healthy family functioning, even if just for a time. For me, for now, however, I’m done experimenting with the names-roles-category of family. I choose instead a broadly defined notion of companionship. We need not be family to share a family dinner, after all. We may share bread with any who come to our table, for as long as it’s healthy for them to remain there.