It's Father's Day, in America:
Jun. 17th, 2012 12:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
capri0mniThese Mother's / Father's Days always make me feel a little bit bitter, because A) they remind me that I no longer have either parent in my life, anymore, B) both my parents were scornful of the Greeting Card Industry's commercialization of parenthood while they were alive, anyway, and C) Google's horrible gender-normative animated "doodles" make me want to "GRAH!"
However, as I was toddling to bed, turning out lights, after midnight (with these thoughts fresh in my mind), something caught my eye, and I found this photo had slipped from between some books on the shelf, probably, and had fallen onto the floor. So I took it As A Sign that maybe I should Celebrate Anyway, because, dammit: Celebrations are Good on Principle! So:
No writing on the back of this picture, and I'm terrible at guessing the ages of little kids, but based on my size and hair cut, I think I may have been three or four years old? which would make this 1967 or '68. My mother isn't actually in the frame, but she's in the picture, so to speak, because she was the one who saw the moment, and realized it was worth remembering.
*(If your biological father does not deserve celebrating, for his own sake, celebrate surviving him).
However, as I was toddling to bed, turning out lights, after midnight (with these thoughts fresh in my mind), something caught my eye, and I found this photo had slipped from between some books on the shelf, probably, and had fallen onto the floor. So I took it As A Sign that maybe I should Celebrate Anyway, because, dammit: Celebrations are Good on Principle! So:
No writing on the back of this picture, and I'm terrible at guessing the ages of little kids, but based on my size and hair cut, I think I may have been three or four years old? which would make this 1967 or '68. My mother isn't actually in the frame, but she's in the picture, so to speak, because she was the one who saw the moment, and realized it was worth remembering.
*(If your biological father does not deserve celebrating, for his own sake, celebrate surviving him).
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Date: 2012-06-17 06:05 pm (UTC)I'm celebrating the absence of mother & father.
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Date: 2012-06-17 06:47 pm (UTC)Oh, and: Hooray for having something to celebrate, whatever it is!
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Date: 2012-06-18 12:46 pm (UTC)Cards are a thing in my family, thus obligatory, which means discarding the bitterness over commercialization (and the lack of sentiments like "thanks for letting me leave", hah hah) and trying to create some sense of individuality within that framework.
Which is to say: I do a lot of note-writing in the open spaces.
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Date: 2012-06-18 02:20 pm (UTC)(. . .the lack of sentiments like "thanks for letting me leave", hah hah)
My mother always thought a good birthday card sentiment between Mother and Teenage Daughter (in either direction) would be (something like):
Happy Birthday!
Congratulations!
We've survived the year without murder.
Let's celebrate.
(I guess that's where my "Any excuse to celebrate" philosophy comes from...)
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Date: 2012-06-18 07:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-18 08:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-18 09:04 pm (UTC)"Thank you for giving me the freedom to spread my wings." (with an image of a dove, or maybe an eagle, in flight, with a gloriously colored sky, naturally).
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Date: 2012-06-19 01:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-19 01:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-19 09:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-19 03:20 pm (UTC)Google's gender-dichotomy hit me as particularly distasteful this year: "mothers spend time standing and waiting, while wearing jewelry, and they get flowers; father's spend their time reading the newspaper, and they get robots."
I think it was just after seeing this year's Father's Day doodle that I grumpily decided that I wanted No More Internet, and that it was time to go to bed.
...Five minutes later, I saw this picture. And I took it as A Sign: Photographic Proof that Google's gender-dichotomy (women are pretty/cuddly and men are Serious) is a LIE... and this picture is forty-five years old. So I knew I had to post it, as counter-magic.
...Also, I'm amused that I basically have had the exact same hair style my entire life...
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Date: 2012-06-19 05:22 pm (UTC)Hee! Thank you for sharing that. It's one of the details we know about our offline friends but tend to miss out with our online friends.
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Date: 2012-06-19 08:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-21 01:03 am (UTC)Exactly the same for me, though I think my mother regretted it when people asked her what she got for mother's day.
That's a lovely photo!
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Date: 2012-06-21 03:11 am (UTC)Yes, it is. Mother always had an excellent eye both for the right moment and the right composition.
And before she died, she got to use that skill professionally as a reporter/photographer for various local newspapers. It wasn't a career she was planning on, but while I was taking courses at a local community college (she had to drive me there and drive me back) she saw a course in journalism and thought it looked interesting/would be good to know the basics of, to support her work for environmental organizations. So she enrolled in the course so that she'd have something to do besides wait.
Despite enrolling six weeks late, she got an A in the course, and was encouraged by her professor to get a bachelor's degree. She did, finishing her college education 20 years after dropping out to be an airline stewardess the first time 'round (she entered her junior year as I was finishing up my freshman year).
And that, basically, is my mother in a nutshell. Oh, and anybody who sat down with her to play a game of Scrabble could expect to lose. ;-)
And sometime soon, this photo may feature again in a rant about how angry it makes me when people just assume I had a miserable childhood, because I couldn't walk, and wore those weird prescription shoes.
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Date: 2012-06-21 06:22 am (UTC)And you were very cute!
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Date: 2012-06-21 02:54 pm (UTC)Thank you. I can accept that compliment now, because that version of me is far enough away in time.* But if you'd said that to me then, I would have given you the stink eye... I'm a Capricorn--even as babies we can't stand baby talk.
*maybe humans do regenerate into different personalities.... just a lot less ... explosively (?) than Timelords?
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Date: 2012-06-21 09:18 pm (UTC)I even hate the term "baby" used as a term of affection, esp in theose "lurve ya behbeh" songs. Ugh.
Yes, I do think we change as we get grow. I used to be very introverted and not have many social graces but I'm much easier and happier in company now. I've also noticed that most people are a hell of a lot more tolerant and kind than most kids are.
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Date: 2012-06-21 10:52 pm (UTC)[style voice=spock] Fascinating. [/style]
In my experience, I've noticed the exact opposite. I'd say that, throughout my life, 99.9% of the time, the bullying I've endured has been at the hands of adults,* and 90% of the time, the people most willing and open to showing signs of friendship toward me have been kids -- both when I was a kid, and after I grew to adulthood.. ...The sad thing is when they learn the 'cultural norm lessons' from their parents and "grow out of it."
Of course, being a geek, I'm already forming a new theory about the power structure dynamics behind bullying, that can integrate both your experience and mind into some sort of unified whole.
This may require a whole new post. ;-) But not today... Too hot, today.
Happy Yule, BTW!
*(of course, the culture doesn't call it "Bullying," because the culture has granted them the authority to make the rules, even when they make the rules up on the spot, and those rules are entirely unfair)
... who, me ...bitter? nah... Well... maybe a little...
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Date: 2012-06-22 12:40 am (UTC)At secondary school I saw a lot of bullying though didn't experience any, maybe because I was the class clown. As an adult however I found that in general I was much more accepted regardless of appearance, culture etc, but of course there are always exceptions (esp sexism). I left my last full-time job because of a bullying manager and that's not uncommon, but in general I'm a lot happier about myself and life than when I was at school.
Not to say that individual kids aren't lovely and accepting, just that some can be mean in packs.
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Date: 2012-06-22 01:23 am (UTC)Oh, and I should also mention that the most of the "bullying" I got from adults I got mostly when I was a kid - through mid-teens, it's been far less intense since I've been able to relate to adults as peers. Though I have no adult friends who are my physical neighbors -- all my adult friends are either on the Internet, or back in New York, where I grew up.
I discovered pretty soon after moving here that the adults in my neighborhood would simply prefer not to talk or interact with me, period. Though when their kids were little, the kids would come knock on my door to ask me to come see the show they were putting on, or to bring me flowers they had found, their parents hardly ever initiated contact. And now that those little kids are all high school age, they don't come 'round any more, either.... :-/ And since mine is the only house with no flight of steps to the door, it's just impossible for me to go over to their houses for a casual visit.
Yeah. I don't know if it's 'cause I'm physically disabled, or in my late 40s, and still neither a mother nor married, I can't say. But I keep getting the vibe that I just don't fit their mold for the "right" way to be a person.