In June of 1979 my parents married. They celebrated by a small and subdued dinner with relatives and close friends. During the toasts, I began to reflect on my twenty-seven years in their lives and analyzing the weird little world that is my family.
My father comes from a proper southern aristocratic family. These people live in big houses, drive fancy cars, and think of church as a socializing hour. My father’s family has rich historical roots, both in the Revolutionary and Civil War. I tease with friends that my family is waiting for the South to rise again for no other reason than to see a return on their investment. I embrace the history, the bad and the good. At least I have an idea of where my people came from, even if I don’t approve of their choices a hundred plus years ago.
My mother, on the other hand, comes from a long line of Blue Collar Yankees. My grandparents were the first in two generations to finish high school. They lived in a hick little town in Vermont; my grandmother staying home to take care of her five children while my grandfather drove a Greyhound bus, Boston to NYC. My mother made her own clothes, her brothers lived in hand-me-downs, glamour and prestige was only a dream.
In 1970, my mother’s family moved to the south. My grandfather got offered a partnership with an old war buddy to open their own garage and he took it, investing $3,000 and moving his family across the country and into an entirely different world than back woods Vermont. The culture shock was traumatic.
Mom and Dad met in high school. My father was the youngest child of a wealthy well to do family who had all the potential to have a fancy life and none of the initiative. My mother was a chubby smart kid dreaming of a higher education her parents could never afford for her.
He cheated off her in Chemistry; she got to hang with the rich kids in exchange. A friendship blossomed.
The summer after graduation my parents started dating. After listening to stories of years past and going through dusty photo albums I think my father started dating my mother to piss of my grandparents. He was a tall, goofy looking kid with shoulder length red hair whose idea of a good night was sharing a joint in the back of his VW van after a Steppenwolf concert. This did not sit well with my prim and proper grandparents. They had built a tolerance to my father’s less than aspiring behavior so to put the last nail in the coffin of disappointment my father took my mother out, the girl from the poor side of town who didn’t have a recorded bloodline back to European royalty. They severely disapproved.
Though I think my father started dating my mother out of spite for his parents, love did develop. They spent the summer bounding around Florida together, just them, the van, and probably enough weed to land them a felony indictment today.
In the fall my father went to college where he promptly wall papered his dorm room in Budweiser labels off his conquered beer bottles. My mother moved into an apartment with her best friend, making her part of the rent as a receptionist in an insurance office while trying to scrape together enough cash to afford biology classes at the local community college. After two semesters she could no longer afford classes and gave up her dream of being a doctor.
It took my father five years to finish his first bachelors degree. The first year lost to a haze of smoke, alcohol and enlightening conversations about the soul shaking depth of Three Dog Night. My mother waited for him at home and enjoyed their too short summers together between his academic years. He proposed to her the summer before his second senior year. My grandmother groaned with displeasure, but accepted it begrudgingly. If she couldn’t get my father to marry a woman of her choosing then she’d change my mother into a woman worthy her last name.
The year my father finished his studies, his mother set out molding my mother into the perfect southern belle. I can only imagine how humiliating it was for my mother, enduring my grandmother’s scrutiny. She was plucked and primped, had her hair chemically treated and forced to diet way past healthy standards. My mother learned to curtsy and serve tea. She was taught to dote on men and fade into the background at dinner parties. She learned to be a woman good enough for my father’s last name.
I resented my grandmother for a long time. She broke my mother and it would take years for her to fight her way out of that kind of conditioning. My grandmother isn’t a terrible person, just a victim of her time and community and unfortunately the abused often abuse and she did a number on my mother. Now that my grandmother has fallen victim to senility I find it easy to forgive her, but in my youth I resented her. I am sorry for that. She only did what had been done to her.
By the time June 1979 rolled around, my mother was a quiet speaking, newly Presbyterian, devotee, thirty pounds lighter and all the fire gone from her eyes. It was the best my grandmother could do with only a year of conditioning. If she had two, my mother would have been sixty pounds lighter.
My parents lived in the fallacy of perfection for a many, many years. They bought a house, had two kids, went to church, all the things a young family is supposed to do. As children, my brother and I were taught table and social manners. My brother was taught to do manly things like open doors and pull out chairs for women. I was taught to be quiet and always eat less than I wanted in public. This preparation was a farce. My mother knew this, but it pleased my father’s family that my brother and I were the epitome of cultured youth.
We lived two lives. With the blue blood’s I wore patent leather mary janes and frilly dresses in the dead of summer. Sitting on the grand front porch of my grandmother’s hundred year old plantation home, I watched my brother and male cousins play in the lake while my cousin Buffy and I sat sweating and listening to my grandmother tell us where to go to school, what to study, and which families to marry into.
My mother’s family was completely different. When we left my father’s place I would change in the car, ditching the lace socks and petticoats for shorts and Winnie the Pooh t-shirts. I got to wear sneakers and pull the bows out of my hair. My mother’s brothers drank beer and told inappropriate, but funny, stories of their youth. We BBQ’d instead of dined, teased instead of quipped, and wrestled instead of waltzed.
My grandfather taught me how to change the oil in a car. He took me for rides on his motorcycle and watched old episodes of MASH while telling me “this was MY war.” My grandmother taught me to make clam dip and to jitterbug, she bought me overalls and ball caps instead of lace and petticoats. My uncles took me to the pool, setting me on their shoulders to play chicken with my younger cousins; we horse-played and splashed each other into exhaustion. At night we’d sit on the small porch of their two bedroom home and watch fireflies.
I never got a lecture about who to marry.
The duality of my youth was often confusing. As I aged, I started to notice certain differences between my two families, not just mannerisms and behaviors but material things as well. My father’s family had wealth and power. With them I could go to fancy summer camps and get music lessons. I got to travel to Europe and see Picasso paintings on the wall instead of in books. My grandmother gave me French perfume and took me to the theater. My mother’s parents could not compete with those things. I got their acceptance and support, but trips to Paris were too big for them.
When I turned twelve, my father’s mother announced I would begin cotillion classes, at her expense of course. The classes were awful, the girls catty and vicious. The instructors were vapid and callous. Until this point I had always considered myself equal to my peers, but these people made me feel less than, insignificant, worthless. I told my mother this, begged and pleaded her to let me quit. She saw my pain and I believe wished to acquiesce, but my grandmother still held incredible power of my mother and she could not let me quit, not with the judgment waiting. She whispered encouragement instead, told me to turn the other cheek and finish my classes. I was so angry with her for forcing me to endure the harshness of these people. It would take years for me to forgive her.
When I was fifteen, I attended my first “Coming Out Ball.” The name is so absurd and in today’s vernacular means something entirely different than originally intended by socialites. My grandmother bought me the dress. It was white and huge. I looked like a child bride with my hair in curls and blush on my cheeks.
My mother’s father dropped me off, my father was out of town on business and my mother was taking night classes to be a nurse. So Grampie took me, in his old pick up truck. I was embarrassed by the truck, I was afraid the girls would make fun of me, but I was smart enough to keep that to myself. I think he knew it though; he was quiet on the drive. I was to call him when it was over and he’d take me to get ice cream. He said I looked pretty and wished me a good time.
As soon as my polished white shoes touched the paved sidewalk I knew I was a guppy in a tank of piranhas. I fiddled with the gloves and smoothed my dress insistently until an instructor told me to stop fidgeting. Then I just chewed the inside of my cheek. That hurt.
The boys were all older, sons of the finest wealthy families in the area, decked out in tuxes and shinny shoes. A boy asked me to dance. He was nice, even when I stepped on his toes. After the dance we went to get punch. I flirted a little, my first time really trying to. He smiled at me as we drank our refreshments, shyly glancing at each other. Perhaps I had found a friend is this shark tank.
Of course I spilled the punch on my dress.
I was mortified, totally and completely. One of our instructors took me to the bathroom and tried vainly to draw out the red stain with seltzer water, but to no avail. Now I had a big red stain with a wet spot surrounding it on my boob. I was prepared to make the best of it, it was just a stain after all, no one died. But my instructor advised me to call my parents and be picked up. Shocked at being dismissed so easily I used the phone at the concierge desk and called my grandfather.
Fifteen minutes later, my grandmother’s truck pulled up and I scrambled inside, ashamed I had been banished so quickly. My grandfather waited until we were back on the road to ask why I left so early, I pointed at the stain on my chest and recounted how I had been asked to leave. My grandfather “hmphed,” irritably and muttered under his breath about snobs and people who thought their shit didn’t stink. About halfway to the house he started to slow and asked me if I was tired. I shook my head.
My grandfather took me to a bar. In my big white dress, we went to the crab shack. The establishment hovered over the water, with a slip off to the left where the locals could back in their tiny motorboats for a day of fishing. This is where my grandfather went after spending the day under the bourgeois’ SUV’s and German imports.
He walked in, holding my hand, saying hello to the patrons as we went by. He introduced me and jokingly warned them to be on their best behavior. I’m not sure how many debutants had graced these sticky walls, but the patrons hardly batted an eyelash, simply welcoming me with polite cheers and a few whistles.
My grandfather ordered me a coke to go with his beer and put a pair of quarters in the jukebox. In my fancy dress, my grandfather danced me around the tables while Elvis sang. The boys cheered. After the song ended, one of my grandfather’s friends asked for a turn and made a big show of bowing politely. I giggled. For twenty minutes I was the belle of the ball, treated like a princess by those grease monkeys and janitors.
As our evening drew to a close, one of the patrons asked me if I’d like to go fishing. He said night fishing was the best thing a man could do in the dark with his clothes on. I chuckled; my grandfather called him a jackass, but smiled. The only boat I had ever been on was a large sailboat and I was intrigued to float along in this tiny vessel.
I asked my grandfather if we could go and he debated it for a moment. He warned I’d get my dress dirty in the boat. I shrugged, it was already ruined, who really cared about some mud on my butt. John, my grandfather’s friend with the boat offered a solution, giant rubber waders. John backed the motorboat down the slip as my grandfather helped me into the waders. Together we gathered the fluffy skirt and he tied a knot with the folds around my back, a giant white bustle over my green rubber legs.
We didn’t catch anything that night. But I did get to hear some pretty hysterical stories about their misspent youth. My grandfather even let me take sips off his beer. That evening at the crab shack remains one of my fondest memories of my youth, I will remain eternally grateful for getting kicked out of the ball.
I never went back to cotillion. Grandmother was annoyed, for about a year, but got over it when I agreed to ballroom dance lesson. Those were actually fun.
Some of my experiences pretending to be a southern belle were trying, but I’m glad for them none-the-less. I learned how to behave at fancy dinners and have never wondered which fork to use, that knowledge is soundly imbedded. I travelled and saw amazing things that many people will only dream of. I’m thankful for those experiences, even if they came with conditions. My father’s family loves me, they just wanted me to be the best me I could be. Though we disagree over what exactly is the best version of myself, I understand why they act the way they do. It’s annoying, but I understand it.
At the end of the day, I am a product of both their worlds. The competing personas have a home in me and it’s a privilege to live both of their lives. I am the best of both of them, a beer drinking theater lover, an intellectual laughing at fart jokes, a debutant in waders.
