It's come to my attention that I am in fact one of the wildest, craziest people on my mom's side of the family. That should give you some sort of idea of where the bar is.
I was thinking about this because when I was on the phone with my mom yesterday, she was telling me all about how she's going to Mobile for my cousin Emma's high school graduation, because she is valedictorian, national merit finalist, and got a full ride to LSU. Chemistry major, just like her sister Mary Helene.
I'm very happy for them both, but it did make me think. Reader, my brothers and I are the only ones on that side of the family who went to public school. The Alabama conservatism runs deep. Of all my aunts, uncles, and cousins and everything on my mom's side, nobody has any tattoos or dyes their hair anything other than blonde. Nobody leaves Alabama--except possibly to go to Louisiana, of course. I don't even think anyone else in the family would do anything as crazy and liberal as study the humanities in college. Science and engineering only! Business and law are also acceptable.
What a world, in which my three brothers and I are the black sheep, because we would dare to go to the University of California. And Alex and I, doubly marked, for not being engineers. However, playing piano and singing both give me lots of points back into the Ladylike category, which is very important. It is still wild to consider what drama it was, what family embarrassment it was, that I did not want to do a beauty pageant. Luckily, of course, Mary Helene and Emma competed.
Here's a fact that I had nearly forgotten: my grandparents weren't on speaking terms with my aunt Amanda for years. Her offense? She was living with her boyfriend, but they weren't married. Reader, Amanda was in her late 20s or early 30s when this happened. I remember being told about this like it was a great scandal, only to be talked about in hushed tones when nobody's around.
The situation is dire, Reader, dire. However sheltered I may have been as a child (and believe me, I was, running around in a Mormon friend group just for the love of the game), it's nothing compared to my cousins. I remember when I was in high school, my mom was considering asking if Mary Helene and Emma wanted to come to camp, since they both do theatre at school. She decided against it, though, after realizing that they probably had never been around queer people before and their parents wouldn't want them to start now.
There's a fantasy world in which they came to camp in middle school/high school, in some of my first years on staff. I could tell them that "There is more in heaven and earth than is dreamt of in your philosophy." (A little Hamlet quote for you there, on the house). Let them experience something, anything, that isn't Alabama private school. Mary Helene wanted to go to UAB (University of Alabama at Birmingham), but I think she ended up accepting an offer at University of South Alabama. Even Birmingham was too far away from home and too liberal. CENTRAL Alabama? What are you, a yankee?
It's weird to think about, because I'm really not very close with my cousins at all. I never see them, and we have very little in common. I see them maybe once every few years. But I can't help but feel for them. They don't even know everything they're missing out on. It's a path I very nearly went down myself and thank God each day that I decided against it.
Imagine Reader, a world where the most wild black sheep of the family are... Arlo and me.
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