NORMAL LIFE: The ’Notion’ Of Family

Every family believes that their own is somewhat superior. Deep down, however, every family has its secrets. And they should remain that way. As a child, you grow up knowing that certain things you heard or saw were simply things that you heard and saw, and nothing else. You would never discuss these things you heard or saw with friends at school, not even with your own cousins for these things remained within your own immediate family, to protect those whose dispensed unconditional love and strict morals which, if obeyed, would guarantee you a fruitful life.

I am rather proud of the way I have turned out but, within the family, we have agreed that nobody else, be it uncles, aunts, grandparents, family friends etc, needs to know that I am gay because what would be gained? For sure, it would spark some idle, short-term gossip, perhaps result in some distasteful comments, which would be of a venomous nature very much worse than the actuality of homosexuality itself. Basically, life should be lived on a need-to-know basis.

I felt it to be the decent thing to let my parents know that I was what I was. They would discover that the sounds of little feet will not spring from any activity of my own and, as hopeful grandparents (why anyone wants to be a grandparent is beyond me, wasn't it hard enough the first time round?!), they have the right to know. But it’s a shame that, now that we are all adults, our parents start to feel that we have the right to know what is going on in their lives too. After all, we’re adults now...we don’t need wrapping up in cotton wool. Or do we?

Recently, Bree’s father sparked a furor with the question: When do you [Bree] plan to change your ‘lifestyle’, settle down and have childrens? When Bree told me this, my heart went out to him; we have been together more than five years so for his father to come out with something like this is just downright ridiculous. The notion of myself being Bree’s ‘friend’ might have worked for the first or second time, but not for five years. I mean, come on! Needless to say, his father’s recent admission that he disapproves of ‘us’ has made me feel like the ‘other woman’, trapped in a kind of triangle between a father and his own son. After all, if I retreat to the background, everything will be all right, won’t it? Bree isn’t overly concerned. If anyone knows his father, he does.

And I thought I knew my own father. It seems that now my siblings and I are in our thirties, my father is intent on undoing all the ‘goodness’ that he spent years literally knocking into us; not an overly violent man, but when he got angry, my father got bloody angry and didn’t refrain from using a leather belt if we had been especially naughty. While the use of such ‘chastisement’ might be seen as ‘the way it was done back then’, I have often felt sorry for my father. The son of a Scottish miner, my father’s childhood in one of the roughest parts of Scotland was hardly a bed of roses.

But that’s all in the past, isn’t it? Yes, it’s all in the past and my father’s behaviour is justified on the basis that how could have known any better if he had been raised in such a harsh manner himself? While I can forgive that, I just can’t seem to forgive my father’s apparent recent attempt (there's no evidence of anything further, yet!) to woo my own mother’s sister. My Aunt is no angel for, in the seventies, she was for a period of time what they called ‘a lady of the night’. I can’t help but feel that I know too much about my family and, conversely, they now know too much about me. Perhaps they feel that, because I had entrusted them with such telling information, they feel the need to reciprocate? Do other thirty-something’s have these problems? Is this the next phase on the path to ultimate maturity?

I have just finished reading Mark Haddon’s A Spot Of Bother, an amusing account of daily family life featuring a father who suspects he has cancer, a wife who is having an affair with the father’s former colleague, a daughter who is marrying a man no one in the family likes and a gay son who has just split up with his partner. As the wedding day nears, you can imagine the highs and lows. Sound familiar?