24 December 2002 (Tuesday)

ties that bind

A very merry Christmas to all -- to those of you who celebrate it, anyway. (You can never be sure, given religious diversity and anti-consumerism boycotts. I'd like to go to a pagan solstice sometime.)

There's an autumnal feel to the family gathering this year. I've been living on my own for six Christmasses now, Emmett for almost three, and between four cars and disparate sets of friends to visit, members of the family scatter in separate directions for most of the day. In a little while Liz will be driving too -- and one of these years I may be spending Christmas with my husband's family, instead of my own. We're all on independent paths, and the moments we come together are so rare that they feel like events in and of themselves, things that require careful orchestration if they're to happen at all. The communal sense of this house is fading. We're growing up.

The key to survival: food. Dad was right to insist throughout my childhood that we have meals together; I think it's where the family was built, really, and it's where we always return when we're unsure of who we are to one another. At the kitchen table we're on familiar ground. Conversation blossoms, debate rages, and all those stupid in-jokes resurface to howling laughter. We dredge up our collective history as we eat, retelling it, adding chapters. If we came to an empty table expressly for the purpose of connecting, it wouldn't work. You need to have your mouth full for these things.

posted by enjelani @ 06:40 PM PST [ link ]

22 December 2002 (Sunday)

i could never live there

I spent the evening in a jaw-droppingly gorgeous house, perched atop a hill that overlooks the glittering valley to the east. Doctors, professors and company founders milled about the atrium, nibbling on sushi and crab-stuffed cherry tomatoes, as the hosts explained that yes, their custom-built home had been featured recently in the architect's public exhibit. Their eldest daughter, who invited me, is a surgery resident as well as an avid dancer, pianist and violinist, and her Chinese watercolor paintings adorn the hallway leading to the wine cellar.

This is, I feel certain, the life that my parents might have wished for me. Not the life I've chosen.

I'm being a tad facetious. My mother and father never put image or prestige above genuine fulfillment, and for that I'm grateful. But I think they always hoped I would find my passion somewhere among the elite professions, that I would keep company with powerful and accomplished people, and have enough money to embark on any whim I fancied. The hosts tonight were a fine example of that -- they weren't building some fragile facade of success, but rather had arrived quite naturally to this place of affluence by dedicating themselves to what they loved. Maybe that's what all parents hope for their children, on some level.

I walked through room after room with the other guests, listening and laughing, marveling at the spiral staircase, the marble floors, the angular stainless-steel splendor of the kitchen. The entire place was a thing of beauty. But later, driving back down in the darkness to the main road, I thought: I could never live there.

posted by enjelani @ 01:46 AM PST [ link ]