My New Adopted Sister…
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20 December 2008 | 6 Comments
This is probably way too much information, but here it goes… I got my parents’ Christmas card/letter yesterday and just shook my head in amusement…
We [family name] have ‘Breaking News’ – a new adopted daughter – SARA PALIN. She is such a breath of fresh air and helped us survive the election. Tonight the news broke that someone torched her Church. This saddens us greatly. The America we once knew is fast disappearing, but we are grateful to have lived 84+ years in a more loving atmosphere.
When my parents were born, blacks were segregated and couldn’t vote. Women couldn’t get jobs other than ones like secretary, librarian, teacher, cook, etc. One of the bloodiest most inhuman wars in history (WWI) had just concluded. They spent their childhood in the Great Depression. Then they went through Hitler exterminating Jews, the Japanese occupation of China, the massacres in South Asia, countless famines and brutal dictators, KKK lynching of blacks, race riots in the 60s, and so on, but somehow people like their son wanting to be treated as an equal makes all those other things look insignificant. Somehow all that other stuff is my mom’s definition of “a more loving atmosphere”, and gay people daring to live in committed loving relationships means she’s no longer in “a loving atmosphere”. That’s just fucked up! For a while I’ve had serious problems with my mom’s definition of the word “love”. This is just one more example of that…
Needless to say I don’t spend much time around my parents. Every few years I give it another shot, but I think the try a few years ago was my last.
I don’t even know where to begin. My mind is reeling.
I never hears darah Palin mention anything that made me think she cared much about a “loviing atmosphere”; and all the points you make about your parents’ youth are dead-on. My parents, though they baffle me at times, didn’t fall for the Palin ruse. My boyfriend, however, did.
It might be fun to show up at a family gathering just to fuck with them. 🙂
Seriously, I am so grateful for my family. They went through their bad reaction when I came out 15 (!) years ago, and it got ugly, and then when we were speaking again we still couldn’t talk politics (my sister voted for Dubya in 2000, despite having lived in TX when he was governor, on the sole basis that he said he was “pro-life”), but I think they really get it now. My dad, who looks like he came out of a Republican clone factory (SUV, white, Christian, upper middle class, racist, lives in the suburbs) actually voted for Obama this year.
In the midst of drastic change like we’re seeing now, with the economy, with the climate, with hitting peak oil, people are scared, and it’s hard to let go of the old and familiar to embrace the new and unknown. People process that fear in weird ways sometimes. I think we’re going to see a lot more weirdness of the variety your parents showed in their Xmas card over the next few years. The fear is not an excuse for, among other things, actively trying to disenfranchise whole groups of people and ignoring the bad parts of the “good old days” we hear so much about, but it does sometimes help to understand what’s driving them.
I would also have pity for anyone who wanted to take on the task of adopting Sarah. She’s quite a handful!
If Sarah is adopted, shouldn’t they know how to correctly spell her first name? That woman is bonkers.
I was about to say the same thing, hand.. It’s a shame they don’t know their daughters own name!