If absence makes the heart grow fonder...
Jun. 18th, 2003 01:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jawnbc...going back for a visit makes the mind sharp. Oh, right...I moved 3000km away for a reason.
My family is great. Great great great. But not perfect. And for all the frivolity, there are certainly some shadows. So hopefully here's a mix of the good, the bad and the banal.
My Da is one of 8 kids (5 girls, 3 boys), born to Irish immigrant parents in the Bronx NY. Family is everything to the Egans, and Nanny (grandma) rather matter-of-factly programmed her kids along these lines. Of course we'll see each other several times a week. Of course we'll all live together for the summer.
Yup. (pretty much) All together: grandparents, 5 of 8 kids, 12 of 18 grandkids, another 12 or so 2nd and 3rd cousins. One house, many rooms. One shower.
The shower thing was particularly interesting: to get to it, one had to come out the front door, down the porch stairs to street level, then go under the porch. As a result, we Egans are often mistaken for exhibitionists--in reality, we merely lack certain boundaries. Like modesty.
There were others in the house too; it was a rooming house, with the balance of (most) rooms rented to friends of Da's and his siblings from the Bronx. Where blood lines were thin, kinship notions remained strong, and these are all my cousins today. Fully loaded the house held around 75 people. It was a big honkin' house!
And it was its own self-perpetuating community. We all went to the beach together (100m from our front steps, as in Rockaway Beach), we often ate together, we played Kick The Can together. As we got older we binged on alcohol (a bit of weed, but not much for drugs--my Da was a narc), started exploring our (hetero)sexualities, and pretty much believed our world was Normal.
It was so not normal. Particularly with respect to alcohol consumption. In a bad way.
The purpose of drinking was to get drunk and "be social," in that order. "Social" could include fistfighting, sexual assault, vandalism, vagrancy or dancing. As teens we sat on the boardwalk and listened to rock radio (disco sucked; I clandestinely listened to ABBA in bed, with headphones. quiety). It was not unusual to turn away from the crowd, vomit over the railing onto the beach, and then continue drinking. When it was super-hot we started around noon on the beach, often while playing volleyball and bodysurfing. We'd often take a break around dinner time, then re-convene on the boards before hitting the bars. If we were really raring to go, we'd go back to the boards after the bars closed (4am) and drink in the new day.
What we did wasn't unlike what a lot of our dads did. If this amount of drinking was really a problem, then most everyone we knew had a drinking problem--and that couldn't be right. Could it?
Hmmm.
On the plus side, we knew who we were (Egans, Irish, New Yorkers, street-smart), and had a strong sense of place. And community. God protect anyone who messed with our people--as a few of the local "skels and skanks" would learn over time. Watching your father and uncle quickly and forcibly pound the shite out of someone was disturbing. But it also made us feel protected and valued. Seems so harsh now.
As teens and young adults, we all loved Rockaway--there wasn't a better place to kick back and relax. The beach was hot, the water refreshing and beer always ice cold. But most of us over time realized that to stay in Rockaway could easily lead to being trapped there. The pettiness of pub culture (he/she/they said). The violence of a hypermasculinity unexamined. The numbers of families ruined by one or more parent's alcoholism. I got out first (to uni), then my sister, then Tommy. Most of my cousins did too.
But to "go home" for me is still to go to Rockaway. Where my Nanny, parents, brother Mike, 3 of my aunts and half dozen or so of my cousins all still live. And even with its dark side, we cousins all agree that bringing us all together in the summer house each year gave us much more than it cost. And we'd do it again for the next generation in a heartbeat.
So thanks Nanny, Pop (RIP, Uncles Kevin, Desi (RIP), Joe (RIP), Buster (RIP) and Mike, Aunts Ethna, Una, Eileen, Nancy, Berna, Geri and Brenda, and Mom and Dad. Of all the gifts I've received in life this one--US--was the best!
Go raibh milé maith agat
My family is great. Great great great. But not perfect. And for all the frivolity, there are certainly some shadows. So hopefully here's a mix of the good, the bad and the banal.
My Da is one of 8 kids (5 girls, 3 boys), born to Irish immigrant parents in the Bronx NY. Family is everything to the Egans, and Nanny (grandma) rather matter-of-factly programmed her kids along these lines. Of course we'll see each other several times a week. Of course we'll all live together for the summer.
Yup. (pretty much) All together: grandparents, 5 of 8 kids, 12 of 18 grandkids, another 12 or so 2nd and 3rd cousins. One house, many rooms. One shower.
The shower thing was particularly interesting: to get to it, one had to come out the front door, down the porch stairs to street level, then go under the porch. As a result, we Egans are often mistaken for exhibitionists--in reality, we merely lack certain boundaries. Like modesty.
There were others in the house too; it was a rooming house, with the balance of (most) rooms rented to friends of Da's and his siblings from the Bronx. Where blood lines were thin, kinship notions remained strong, and these are all my cousins today. Fully loaded the house held around 75 people. It was a big honkin' house!
And it was its own self-perpetuating community. We all went to the beach together (100m from our front steps, as in Rockaway Beach), we often ate together, we played Kick The Can together. As we got older we binged on alcohol (a bit of weed, but not much for drugs--my Da was a narc), started exploring our (hetero)sexualities, and pretty much believed our world was Normal.
It was so not normal. Particularly with respect to alcohol consumption. In a bad way.
The purpose of drinking was to get drunk and "be social," in that order. "Social" could include fistfighting, sexual assault, vandalism, vagrancy or dancing. As teens we sat on the boardwalk and listened to rock radio (disco sucked; I clandestinely listened to ABBA in bed, with headphones. quiety). It was not unusual to turn away from the crowd, vomit over the railing onto the beach, and then continue drinking. When it was super-hot we started around noon on the beach, often while playing volleyball and bodysurfing. We'd often take a break around dinner time, then re-convene on the boards before hitting the bars. If we were really raring to go, we'd go back to the boards after the bars closed (4am) and drink in the new day.
What we did wasn't unlike what a lot of our dads did. If this amount of drinking was really a problem, then most everyone we knew had a drinking problem--and that couldn't be right. Could it?
Hmmm.
On the plus side, we knew who we were (Egans, Irish, New Yorkers, street-smart), and had a strong sense of place. And community. God protect anyone who messed with our people--as a few of the local "skels and skanks" would learn over time. Watching your father and uncle quickly and forcibly pound the shite out of someone was disturbing. But it also made us feel protected and valued. Seems so harsh now.
As teens and young adults, we all loved Rockaway--there wasn't a better place to kick back and relax. The beach was hot, the water refreshing and beer always ice cold. But most of us over time realized that to stay in Rockaway could easily lead to being trapped there. The pettiness of pub culture (he/she/they said). The violence of a hypermasculinity unexamined. The numbers of families ruined by one or more parent's alcoholism. I got out first (to uni), then my sister, then Tommy. Most of my cousins did too.
But to "go home" for me is still to go to Rockaway. Where my Nanny, parents, brother Mike, 3 of my aunts and half dozen or so of my cousins all still live. And even with its dark side, we cousins all agree that bringing us all together in the summer house each year gave us much more than it cost. And we'd do it again for the next generation in a heartbeat.
So thanks Nanny, Pop (RIP, Uncles Kevin, Desi (RIP), Joe (RIP), Buster (RIP) and Mike, Aunts Ethna, Una, Eileen, Nancy, Berna, Geri and Brenda, and Mom and Dad. Of all the gifts I've received in life this one--US--was the best!
Go raibh milé maith agat
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Date: 2003-06-17 09:45 pm (UTC)