You are not just an interchangeable android.
Gender roles actually bequeath happiness and purpose.
Uncle Peter was the last remaining man of the family.
But he reneged on what could have been a fulfilling role.
His wife had taken offense when, early in their marriage, say, in 1967, her mother in law, Peter's mother, offered to sweep their floor and imposed a gift of family heirloom chairs upon them.
So, from then on, Kaitlin cold-shouldered Peter's extended family.
A few years later, Peter's brother in law died, and two years after that, his own father died.
With a widowed mother and sister, Peter could have declared, "I am the last remaining man of these families. I need to offer my mother, sister, niece and nephew some family time and male influence."
And Kaitlin may have become a nicer person for it.
I cannot really blame feminism, as Peter came of age in the1950's.
The roots of his hands-off attitude to his mother, sister, and niece and nephew who now were bereaved of son, brother, and a father, and with Peter following his wife's lead, lay in the lackadaisical attitude towards religion in his New England Protestant forebears.
They lived only one town next to us, a fifteen minute drive, and when we would go on Thanksgiving, neither uncle Peter nor aunt Kaitlin nor cousins would even make eye contact with us. I later dubbed this, "the yearly rejection."
There had been no call to scripture and tradition in his formative years. You cannot suddenly call people to duty when times get rough, that call needs to be groomed from a young age.
But the extended family, shrinking, but still there, had not emphasized religion or duty, as times had been good and people's lives were stable in their nice suburb, supper with mom and dad at six o'clock sharp, fun on the weekends.
Uncle Peter never achieved in business what his father had, he had graduated college, was charming and smart but somehow things did not go well for him, and he even had to declare bankruptcy. Kaitlin developed health problems which stayed with her until her death at age 75.
I do not believe he had lots of happiness in life, and looking back, from the perspective of the religiously traditional community I live in, I believe that if he had seen himself as having a God-given role of being the "man of the family", he would have at least had that source of happiness, and may have even been blessed in other ways, as those who do the Lord's Will reap blessings in this life and the next.
When one is attached to scripture and tradition, one has a source from which to draw, but when one is an interchangeable android among equals, and must assert one's individuality and draw only from oneself, they that person may have nothing much to offer.
Believing you have a unique role just because of your gender actually bequeaths a sense of purpose and confidence.
After my interview at Middlebury college, in 1985, I was on my way to tour the campus when, lo and behold, there was aunt Kaitlin and my first cousin! A year younger than I, he was apparently also looking into the college! I was amazed at the coincidence! I approached them with a warmth and enthusiasm and this was her response: she stared with a half smile, half quizzical expression and did not say one word. Her son looked back and forth from me to his mother, as if seeking what to do next. Neither greeted me. I saw the scene and quickly made excuse that my tour guide was waiting - snubbed on Thanksgiving, snubbed in public, with no consideration that her weak stare could hurt or embarrass me, and how odd that her son likewise would not greet me.
Years and years later:
I visited the states in the summer of 2022 and reached out to Peter by email, his younger sister knew I was coming as she had responded to me - lives out west now - but from him there was no answer: it is sad for me, but I think even sadder for him, so I wrote about it:
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Reclining on the beach, mighty ocean waves are rolling towards you, surely the turquoise arch and white foam tipped wave will continue journeying to embrace the bleached, sun baked sands, parched, waiting for a splash of ocean coolness, and as you anticipate what should come naturally, you see the waves suddenly fall limp, sink down into themselves, churning slowly, thick, whirlpool like, then flattening out to nothing but still and murky water. I thought this was an ocean? A bog after all, an unmoving marsh. You rub your eyes and wonder if something is wrong with you.
Later, you buy tickets to a symphony orchestra, and when the music is reaching its crescendo, suddenly the violinists stop the bow in mid air, place their cherished violins in their boxes, snap them shut and make way to leave, the pianists close the piano’s lids, alight from the podium, fold up the music sheets, the floutists place their flutes under their arms and make their way out of the hall, the conductor does not even take a bow, just wipes the remaining perspiration off his brow and exits left. You are sitting in the theater feeling stunned. Some of the other attendees also make their way to an exit like nothing strange had happened, others look around and say, this is a bit odd, but feeling outnumbered, they shrug, pretend this is normal living, and head out. You are left alone in the darkening theater, somehow refusing to believe that this can be real, expecting a comedian to announce that this was all a joke while the orchestra and audience return for a good laugh.
Well you can keep sitting there but eventually you fell hunger pangs and need a meal and you will feel sleepiness and need a place to take a nap. You grudgingly leave the theater, part of you wonders, like that day at the beach, if something is wrong with you, but a certain anger starts to rise inside of you.
No, it is not me - something is wrong in my surroundings.
I was right to expect the crest of the wave to reach for the parched sands, a natural ebb and flow, to be expected. The beach does not earn the embrace of the wave.
The agreement was a concert, not suddenly coming to a halt mid-stroke, leaving the audience either to pretend this is normal, or feel pressured to go along with what everyone else is doing, or maybe allow a real feeling to emerge and guide you elsewhere.
Family is the one place you should feel welcomed, that people should take some interest in you, as they have a stake in your success. It is not normal to visit family and be chronically snubbed.
My recent trip to the USA meant visiting my brother in his beautiful home, receiving nonchalantly some family heirlooms, and inheriting some old pictures.
I had written to uncle Peter, who lives a half hour drive from my brother, saying I was coming stateside to visit my mom, his sister. He did not write back, I nonchalantly wrote him again, still no answer. Then again after I returned to Israel, I was chit chatty and upbeat in all three emails - still no answer.
Upon my return to Israel, I was going through the pictures, there was an old snapshot of Pete, who, while I was growing up, had lived a fifteen minute drive from our home in Brookline Mass, and who we saw no more than once a year. I could not tell you the color of his eyes, he never looked at me. Nor did his wife, Kaitlin, and she was a teacher in the local public school system, I mean, she probably knew something about child psychology, but you see, the story was that my grandmother once offered to sweep the floor when she visited the newly married couple, and for that she could never be forgiven, and by extension, Pete’s relatives were in a sort of Herem (Hebrew for excommunication). They had kids our age, and they had no other family nearby. You’d think, hey let’s get together for a day at the Museum of Science, or on the Freedom Trail - nope, just a begrudging annual Thanksgiving in front of the television.
They would have been kinder to not let us come at all than grant me a thankless day, once a year, though I can thank them in part for getting me out of that secular relativist individualist society.
I will never understand what they gained from snubbing us, I am in a strong position now, I am not exactly going to barge in on them and offer to sweep the floor or demand family support.
But the snubbing must go on.
Yet, during that summer trip, my elderly orthodox Jewish cousin Toby limps up the stairs from a wedding hall with her cane several years after knee operations to give a warm hello to myself and my sons.
Her son, whom I had never met, comes racing across town at his mother’s behest (honor your mother should be universal, the Bible is famous outside of Brooklyn, but hey, offer to sweep the floor and that sin will be visited upon your niece, yeah?), to welcome us.
Cousin Bessie, in the middle of the hardest move of her life, age 84, leaving her home of fifty years to move to a place near her daughter, welcomes us and procures watermelon and kosher orange juice which I almost finished to the last drop after a hot day at the Statue of Liberty. Her daughter took a break from the packing to sit down with us, and gave me the phone number of her daughter, who welcomes me a few days later at her home in Boston Massachusetts, just half an hour away from Uncle Pete, who fears I may offer to sweep, or something.
Not that I have never rubbed my brother or orthodox Jewish cousins the wrong way, I am sure that I have, but in those circles, family overrides friction.
I had cried on the ferry to the Statue of Liberty. The ferry’s motor was loud so I was not ashamed, but some tourists nearby looked at me a bit quizzically. This is where my great great grandfather Thomas Keegan sojourned alone, 1880’s, escaping Ireland and criminal charges for stealing a fish from a lake during the Irish potato famine. I cried that for such a “crime” that a nineteen year old had to flee for his life, I cried for all those that had to escape tyrannies that only worsened on European soil, and I cried that only one of his descendants, from that side of the family, and there are not many, even cares or remembers his story.
I cried for my Jewish ancestors, who fled the pogroms and found safe haven in the USA, and thrived and built more strength of family than my Irish-English side did.
I cried also, tears of joy, because I too, had escaped.
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