The Family Girl #034: Imitation of a Regular Life, 1

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The Family Girl Blogs
(aka "The New Working Girl Blogs")

Blog #34, Imitation of a Regular Life (1 of 2)

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There are so many things that have happened to me these past seven or so years, though I know that all I have gone through don't even compare to one-tenth many of those here in BC have gone through.   But these changes of fortune and ups and downs in life are mine own, and they have helped to shape what I am now, whatever that is, which includes my attitudes, my beliefs, my points of view on life, and so many other things.

Being in a foreign land makes one look at one's life from a fresh perspective.   I suppose because the people around you look at you differently, forcing you to re-assess who and what you really are - to see yourself from a different perspective.

Hence this blog.

I suppose I should say a more different persepective heehee.   After all, us BC denizens already have "skewed" perspectives.   No offense, of course... note the quotation marks? :)

I guess all I ever really wanted was to be like everyone else, or, hmmm... That's not strictly correct... Lemme think that one through a bit...

Actually, who wants to be like everyone else?   Of course, everyone wants to be different from everyone - to be noticed, for example - to be given recognition: to hear the words "good work!" from one's boss, for example, or to be credited for your work, to be recognized for your skills or knowledge.   So. Definitely not just like everyone else.   Even with something as simple as getting kudos for your stories here in BC. :)

So it made me wonder what I really meant when I said I wanted to "be like everyone else," when I clearly didn't want to BE just "like everyone else."

Let's change tacks.

I'm sure people in DC know about 96.3FM and the Quiet Storm, which they would have on air during late evening and after midnight.   At least they did way back around 2005 or 2006.   The Quiet Storm's mostly mellow music,  jazz and old R&B.   Just the kind of soft music you'd want to have at night.

Anyway, all of this doesn't have much bearing to this blog, except that WHUR is memorable to me because of the slow, sad songs that I used to indulge in back during my suicidal "dark phase."

One of these songs that had an impact on me was a real oldie from Barry Manilow (and you guys can quit your eye-rolling and eyebrow-raising, okay?).   The lyrics go, "she's a great little housewife though sometimes she talks like a fool.   But she helps at the store in the holiday rush and she picks up the kids after school, and she puts down the phone when her husband comes home and she changes from mother to wife.  'Til she feels the words hanging between them, and she hangs by her words to her life."

A sad song from a melancholy suburban wife - pretty dated imagery which, I suppose, has less meaning in today's more emancipated world, where the stereotype of a modern female includes going beyond the confines of a housewife or homemaker - an acceptance of career, personal fulfillment and personal goals & recognition.

I grew up in a house where this was the accepted norm even though my folks weren't into that.   So my sister always knew she would be able to do what she wanted, which was just as well, given her outgoing and self-actualized persona.   I doubt if being "just" a housewife was part of her life goals.

As for me, though, the life of that girl in the Barry Manilow song seemed like a wonderful life to me - one I would probably have killed for.   But when I listened to the song a bit more, the lyrics, the melancholy melody and Barry's slightly-lisping singing did indeed make her humdrum housewife-life seem tragic, and cutting her wrist on a broken glass "quite by mistake" seemed like an explainable thing.   Justification for suicide can be many and different, one from the other (I should know), and her diappearance into the obscurity of suburbian life seemed to be one of the more justifiable reasons.

Now, with a little bit more experience with this thing we call life, with my now-jaded-yet-expectant pov, I can understand where she's coming from.   My own reasons for suicide those years ago were more "direct" reasons, but her reasons - a sense of unfulfilment, of not reaching her potential, of not discovering what else she could be - is comparatively vague and amorphous, but yet understandable.

Her life-role seemed one that people expected of her, that of "housewife" and "mother" - honorable labels that older generations hold in respect and esteem.   But for Generation Y folks such as me - those labels have become mutable and less rigid, and included "professional" and "working woman" as parts of the definition of wife and mother.   (Although my being born in 1981 makes that debatable - if I am really a Gen Y or a Gen X baby boomer.   I suppose it's better to say I'm an Echo Boomer, then. heehee...)

I suppose, in my patented long-winded way, I am saying that I am still confused about what I really wanted.   I am still looking for that storybook life that I have in my mind's eye, just like everyone has of their own particular dream, but, like everyone who has gone through enough life experiences, I, like everyone else, know that the storybook thing will always just be in the storybook, that real life will always be less than that.

That girl from the Barry Manilow song was living the storybook sixties-seventies wife, but it wasn't enough for her.   And, lookimg back, although, at the time, I thought that was the life for me, I don't think I would have wanted it for long. I am a child of my time, after all - a child of the internet, of Murphy Brown, Rebecca in Cheers, the gang from Friends, of Hillary Clinton, Tailhook, of the Pentium computer.

I love my ma, and I can look at being the stereotypical kind of wife like she was as some sort of ideal.   But, in reality, it's just not for me.   At least not completely.

Hillary Clinton's infamous quote from the nineties goes "I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies and had teas, but what I decided to do was to fulfill my profession, which I entered before my husband was in public life."   That is the crux of the thing - the stereotype, traditional "storybook" life and the Gen Y self-actualized career-driven life.

For me, there are many role models out there that seem to be able to balance a home life/family life yet pursue a career, and do it femininely and with unquestionable success.   One of them is Giada DeLaurentiis - pursuing a glamorous, unquestionably feminine career, and balancing it with a family life.   I  have no talent in the kitchen, of course, and have no real ambitions to be a famous chef or anything like that, but I think you know what I mean. In her program on the Food Network, I always liked it when she shares her culinary masterpieces to her friends or her husband & family at the end, looking beautiful, coiffed and galmorous.   It's probably staged and all that, but I can't help but hope they're real.   And that's what I want - to be who I have a potential to be, and yet have the kind of family life that Ma and Dad have. If I don't, well, the girl in Barry Manilow's song put it better than I ever could:

"Oh, God, I love my husband and I love my kids.   You know, I wanted to be like my mother, but if I hadn't done it as soon as I did, oh there might have been time to be me - for myself, for myself..."

This blog may be a selfish one, perhaps - at least that's how it sounds to me, wanting to have my cake and eat it, too.   If it does, I hope you don't feel too bad about me.

In the meantime, I say goodnight, for tomorrow, I will need to continue on with my imitation regular life.
     

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Comments

To paraphrase Estelle Reiner?

Andrea Lena's picture

...I'll have the same outlook that you're having! Seriously, I think all of us are imitations in some manner or another, aye? We all choose to pattern ourselves after people we know. So, I hope you'll pardon me if I imitate you from time to time, yes? Thanks for your blog once again. You brighten my day!

  

To be alive is to be vulnerable. Madeleine L'Engle
Love, Andrea Lena

Hi Bobbie,

FWIW (if anything)..... About generations, you probably know this, but....

Boomers are kids of those who became adults around WWII, came home, got married or re-aquainted with the wife, and quickly had kids. There was a "baby boom" as never before in the US; thus the name. Birth dates from '46 to '64, I think. Hillary C and Bill are boomers.

This I'm not sure of, but, I think, gen X was the next generation born; generations have traditionally been twenty years of births; maybe 18 like '46 to '64. Gen Y is the gen after X. Completely guessing, gen X could be '65 to '83, usually boomer spawn, and gen Y would then be '83 to '01. Now, just remembering media mentions of different gens, these 18 yr time periods seem too long.

Maybe someone can post links to a more official definition of gen X and Y. I and first ex are boomers, as is Kim. Kim, Abbie and I had kids quite late, in '86, '88 and for Kim '93. We were born in '49, me, and '53 for Kim and Ab. I think my HS class, at least, mainly had gen X kids.

Heck, I'm so out of it I can't remember why I started telling all this gen' stuff.

I remember the 2nd point I have: I just guess that you're lez, like your roommate/gf is close enough to be your partner. (?) Of course, I don't know, but even lez, you can adopt kids or your partner can get inseminated and have some.

Just after GRS, I really wanted to have a baby come out of me, but mentally I was having sort of a rough time and soon concluded that I was too old, (43, 3 months after GRS) and not up for it.

Hugs and Bright Blessings,
Renee

Some quotes

bobbie-c's picture

Hey, Renee.

Lemme lay some quotations on you.

Generation X is "the generation born after the Western post–World War II baby boom ended."

"The term generally includes people born from the early 1960s through the early 1980s, usually no later than 1981 or 1982."

Generation Y "describes the demographic cohort following Generation X. There are no precise dates for when the Millennial generation starts and ends, and commentators have used birth dates ranging somewhere from the mid-1970s to the late 1980s, early or mid 1990s, or as late as the early 2000's. One segment of this age-group is often called the “eighties babies” generation, in reference to the fact that they were born between January 1, 1980 and December 31, 1989. Members of this generation are called Echo Boomers, due to the significant increase in birth rates through the 1980s and into the 1990s, and because many of them are children of baby boomers."

So Echo Boomers are not to be confused with Baby Boomers. Since the definition of "Generation Y" is less certain, I thought to use the more precise "Echo Boomer" as well.

Speaking of Baby Boomers - you are right:  "a baby boomer is a person who was born during the demographic Post-World War II baby boom between the years 1946 and 1964, according to the U.S. Census Bureau."

I got the quotations I cited above from the following:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_X
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_Y
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_boomer

After that "thing" that happened when I posted  my Shepherd Moon stories, I try (stress "try") to get most of my stuff straight.  :)

And, no, I believe I am more Bi than Lez. But that wasn't what my blog was about...

I was talking more about the inability of knowing precisely what you want as your future, that though the Barry Manilow woman achieved the stereotype role society had set out for her, it wasn't what she really wanted, that the "storybook" definition was never really what she wanted - that though all of us have been brought up to imagine stereotyped "storybook" life goals (and that these stereotypes change from generation to generation), these are not really meant to be achievable, that they are only meant as goalposts you set for yourself that you may reach AND pass as you live life, that your image of who you are and who you want to be will always be mutable and changing, and that if you DO achieve the "storybook" life, you might actually end up unhappy IF you don't move beyond it, or if you are trapped in it.
  Â 

   
   
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And me...

Born '58. Sat between so many stools I need extra buttocks. I was a child of the sixties, but too young to be a Child of the Sixties. I was born in a time when my self-awareness coincided with April Ashley, but Jorgensen (spelling?) never featured, unlike Jan Morris.

My point is a simple one: regardless of generational definitions, at least kids today can find the necessary information. Kids like me just knew that everything was wrong, and believed there was no fix.

I get you!

Alice (my SO) knows me like she knows herself; neither of us can have kids and it hurts us for completely different reasons. It's worse for her because everyone expects it from her - and then it's my fault that she never did, you know? I feel like I should apologize a lot for feeling selfish myself - it's something that maybe only a transperson can understand. When you're feeling selfish it's either because you feel bad about where you are and what you do or don't have, or you feel bad about feeling bad, you know? Neither feelings are very productive. I was walking down the street the other day and a tall girl stepped out of the coffee shop in front of me. She was pregnant, and I was so jealous I could spit. But I don't get to be jealous without comparing what I don't have with what I do, which is a lot. Alice and I love each other, and that's something to be thankful for. To use your analogy? When it seems like somebody moved the goalposts, I realize that someone was me. And I move beyond it all. Your blogs always make me think and take stock of what I have instead of what I don't. Thanks for the reminder.

Oh, there are other...

Oh, there are other reasons to feel bad about being selfish in wanting to be yourself - the fact you're forcing those who love you to transition too... Even if they want to or want it for you - it's still stressful for them.

FWIW - I'm a boomer... And one of my kids is an echo boomer - the other gen-Y... Go figure. :-)

Anne

having it all

I grew up in the late 70's and early 80's, and saw woman go from housewives to businesswomen, but I think they sometimes wished secretly they could just have stayed home like their mother's had, as they found less satisfaction than advertized. Some of the feminists took on male attitudes about raising kids and taking care of a house as if those things were meaningless because the woman didnt get a salary for them. But if the feminine revolution is to mean anything, it has to be about making choices for ourselves - whether to stay at home and bake cookies, be a business tycoon, or some option in between. Nobody ever really has it all, but you can probably find a balance that works. And I have every confidence you will.

DogSig.png

Thank you Bobbie,

Our dear sister Steph has hit the nail on the head about those of us of an older vintage.
There was nothing in the way of information,you just had to get on with life as presented
to you.In 1951 at age 18 I was going away to work in the bush and my Mum took me to one side
and said "you are a good boy,but you have a lovely feminine side to you that you will have to
learn to hide",and that was the best advice that I could ever have got and hide it I did,until
now,in my declining years I can let it all out and enjoy life and be the person I always was,
now an old woman and proud of it. Bobbie, we all understand you and love you.
I can't,for the life of me,understand why anyone would think otherwise,unless they had no understanding
of what TG/TS was all about,and thank you Steph.

ALISON