Cousins

[vaneramos]

Recently I had unanticipated encounters with several of my cousins.

I have a large rabble of relatives on my mother's side, and no desire to contact most of them. They're mostly homophobic rednecks and I disappeared off their radar when my marriage broke up.

The exception is Aunt Carol's family. Her youngest son, Jim, attended University of Guelph around the same time I did, but moved on to graduate studies in herpetology in California. About five years ago he revisited Guelph for a frog symposium and I happened to run into him downtown. We went out for coffee, I came out to him, and he told me his mother would be supportive, so I subsequently came out to her and Jim's brother.

Jim and his wife, Deb, stopped at our cottage during their honeymoon on July 27. She is a doctor of mycology (fungus) and they met at Indiana University South Bend, where they both teach. They are fascinating people, and it would honestly be a delight to visit them if I ever travel through the Midwest. Of all my relatives, Jim is the most like me with respect to interests and temperament.

Dad, on the other hand, has no family left except his niece and nephew, Catherine and Doug. They stopped to see all of us on August 2, along with two of Doug's three children, Emily and Alex, and his new girlfriend, Brenda.

These cousins had an uncle on their mother's side, Bob Yonge, who was gay. More than 40 years ago he brought a young man, Jim, home from Thailand and they lived together until Bob's death a couple years ago, so Cathy and Doug grew up regarding Jim as an uncle. My aunt and uncle were positive toward them, and I believe this is part of the reason Dad isn't homophobic.

I hadn't seen Catherine since her father's wake in 1994, but she emailed me three years ago after finding out I was gay, to express her support. The last time I saw Doug was in 1996. His daughter, Emily, will attend University of Guelph this fall.

I plan to try and see Mom's youngest sister, Nancy, when I visit Nova Scotia with the girls this summer. I haven't seen her in 20 years.





Jim, Deb and their dog, Emma





Eight Waffles plus one: Don (dad), Emily, Marian, Brenna, Mom, Catherine, Brenda, Doug and Alexander

Comments

[daisydumont.livejournal.com]

IUSB! yay for hoosierosity. :)

great photos. how nice that you all got together!

nothing to do with the actual point of the entry

[queenmomcat.livejournal.com]

South Bend is only a stone's throw from where Stephe-and-I live now; if you ever do end up visiting Jim and Deb and wish/have time to meet up with us, drop us a line.

[blt4success66.livejournal.com]

herpetology and mycology? You have an interesting extended family.

It sounds as if they are supportive and a good time was had by all...HUGS!

[noveldevice.livejournal.com]

*squee* It's so cute that he does snakes and she does fungus and they met at school...

Your daughters look gorgeous as always, and I'm glad some of your family are cool. :)

Re: nothing to do with the actual point of the entry

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Another reason to travel that way someday.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Wafflia.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Thanks. I forgote you're a hoosier!

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

I don't know about my extended family in general, but Jim and his wife are certainly intersting. ;-)

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

I think they make a pretty interesting couple, too, in fact they're both doing things I would have loved. Too bad I was so unhappy in my early life; I thought I wasn't cut out for academia, but I wasn't even considering the real problem.

[noveldevice.livejournal.com]

I think that's pretty common. You get to college, you're young, still too influenced by your parents and what they want for you--if you're smart, generally you want to have a life plan because all these adults are telling you that you should...

It can make for catastrophe. Adults tend to forget--or not respect, or not understand, or not care--that adolescent brains are different than adult brains, that they're fluid and that it's supposed to still be a time for adolescents to be figuring out what's what. The research that came out recently about when the average person develops an appreciation for the process of their actions leading to consequences really turned on the light bulb for me in my dealings with people in their teens and early twenties--they make decisions that make no sense to me because they aren't able to view their actions in the same way that I view mine, and so my advice often won't make sense to them either, because it takes into account probabilities that they're not yet able to perceive.

Obviously this is only the case for some (possibly most) young people, but it's something that I try to keep in mind. It's also a lens with which I view my past--I made some unwise decisions (like the decision to leave university, or before that, to major in something I hated) because that's what you do at that age. I try not to beat myself up about it because I know that I didn't have all the information and wasn't able to consider things as rationally then as I can (and hopefully do) now.

At that age, I think a lot of young people engage in "magical thinking" if you know what I mean, and often we will end up drawing completely erroneous conclusions about something based on something else with which it has only a loose association, like your feeling that you weren't cut out for academia because you were miserable at that point in time. The misery, I know, was from other things, but it's easier to associate those feelings with a place or a specific act rather than something going on in your head. Sorry this got so long-winded!

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Young men in particular have a tendency to believe they're invincible. What a revelation it was, in my late 20s, to begin realizing I didn't know everything. And never would. The older we get, the less we know.

I don't think evangelical Christianity particularly helped me appreciate this either. As long as one confessed one's sins, the consequences weren't particularly relevant. Anyway, the world was going to pass away, we would have our eternal reward, and then career choices etc. would amount to nothing. How my thinking has changed!

It's all good for me to bear in mind when I consider giving advice to my own children.