when my sister was showing us around her school she stopped to introduce us to people along the way. at first she would pause, "this is my sister" (easy) "and her fiance" (i say boyfriend, but fiance is technically more accurate) "and my....." (what the hell are my mom and stepdad to her?) "...aunt and uncle." she had considered saying "this is my dad's first wife and her second husband" but it didn't roll off the tongue as smoothly.
two things struck me about these introductions.
1.
i was reminded how important titles are to us; the need to explain a relationship through a single word. sometimes the technical term doesn't fit as well, or there simply isn't a term that exists, and so we choose our own. titles/words help us define for each other and for ourselves our feelings and understandings of things
2.
i love how "unique" my parents' divorce is; how my family feels bigger, and better, but not broken from their separation. i also love the subsequent relationships and people that came, essentially, from that separation.
4 comments:
i love those relationships too
Gracias por visitarla. Como le dije a tu mama, me emociona y agradezco tenerlos.
this is sooooo nice !!!
thanks camuchi and erk, but mostly thanks aunt and uncle.
very rewarding.
I was recently in a group setting with a transgender mother and her son who I only knew was a boy when she used his pronoun. (He was wearing a pink hat and green overalls, and totally broke the norm of "gender dress.") She said, "I'm not his mommy, I'm his "pare." I loved that he/she introduced a new word for that relationship. I suppose the next step is to ask her/him what pronoun they prefer.
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