my brother
Having grown up in the 1970s and 1980s, I never considered the term "family values" to be anything more than Republican spin. I happily declared myself "anti-family-values" for many years. (Easier done, of course, before you have wife or children.)
When CJ first spoke to me of "chosen family" the term resonated.
I feel far less ambivalent about my chosen family than I do about my genetic family.
Of course, chosen family can be just as casually abandoned as casually chosen. There's the rub. One thing I'll say for my genetic family: they're there when fair-weather "chosen" family might choose to be elsewhere.
I'm very unfond of the term "brother" being applied to someone genetically unrelated.
But ...
My first blood brother (each prick a finger, mix the red ooze) died of leukemia. His family and mine seemed to think that my blood brother's genetic brother and I should be friends. It didn't take.
My next blood brother (same oozy procedure) moved to the other side of the country a few years after we mixed blood. (This is the half-Negro kid the new California locals called Zebra. The one with whom I'd drive our mothers crazy by singing the off-color lyrics from Hair.) Honest-to-G*d, I don't know if Blood Brother #2 is currently alive or dead. I give it 50/50.
I also have an adopted brother, who was witness at my wedding. He was also one of the pilots in the air just over Ground Zero when the second plane hit on 9/11. But even the term "adopted brother" is stretching it since his sire and my siress lived in sin, nothing legal about it -- not by the standards of the State or Church.
If I were to say "my brother" then you might think (a) I'm delirious, since neither of my parents (as far as I know) had any offspring other than yours truly, or you might assume (b) I'm talking about the son of the man my mother lived with and cared for for the couple of decades before his slow demise, or (c) you could believe I'm adopting an African-Americanism to refer to my oldest friend, mon temoin, the best man at my wedding -- the one who just took a position with Martha Stewart.
Or, if you know me frighteningly well, you might suspect I'm referring to a thoroughly unlikely candidate:
My father writes about him here and here.
When CJ first spoke to me of "chosen family" the term resonated.
I feel far less ambivalent about my chosen family than I do about my genetic family.
Of course, chosen family can be just as casually abandoned as casually chosen. There's the rub. One thing I'll say for my genetic family: they're there when fair-weather "chosen" family might choose to be elsewhere.
I'm very unfond of the term "brother" being applied to someone genetically unrelated.
But ...
My first blood brother (each prick a finger, mix the red ooze) died of leukemia. His family and mine seemed to think that my blood brother's genetic brother and I should be friends. It didn't take.
My next blood brother (same oozy procedure) moved to the other side of the country a few years after we mixed blood. (This is the half-Negro kid the new California locals called Zebra. The one with whom I'd drive our mothers crazy by singing the off-color lyrics from Hair.) Honest-to-G*d, I don't know if Blood Brother #2 is currently alive or dead. I give it 50/50.
I also have an adopted brother, who was witness at my wedding. He was also one of the pilots in the air just over Ground Zero when the second plane hit on 9/11. But even the term "adopted brother" is stretching it since his sire and my siress lived in sin, nothing legal about it -- not by the standards of the State or Church.
If I were to say "my brother" then you might think (a) I'm delirious, since neither of my parents (as far as I know) had any offspring other than yours truly, or you might assume (b) I'm talking about the son of the man my mother lived with and cared for for the couple of decades before his slow demise, or (c) you could believe I'm adopting an African-Americanism to refer to my oldest friend, mon temoin, the best man at my wedding -- the one who just took a position with Martha Stewart.
Or, if you know me frighteningly well, you might suspect I'm referring to a thoroughly unlikely candidate:
My father writes about him here and here.
1 Comments:
Burger King, what the eff are you talking about? Were you aiming for incoherence in this post? If so, good job. Love, Stephan
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