Seems

This comic from the excellent Candorville struck a nerve. My own family was also so much about seeming. Without seeming to be bragging, of course. Not the keepingupwiththejoneses middle class seeming, but the poor-but-proud seeming. Paint the house white every few years, mow the lawn every week, shovel the snow, work hard at the job, keep the car running, ironed clothes, shined shoes, mass on Sunday, in dress clothes. Never wear nightclothes, or curlers in one's hair, outside.

Nevermind that the husband is screaming at everyone, behind closed doors, no doubt still audible to neighbors. Ignore the fear and bias. So what if the ample food is tasteless and nutrition free. Both coming from families who couldn't even manage the seeming sometimes, perhaps that felt like a lot. I have a strain of it in myself, much diluted now, I notice it occasionally. That double side of not wanting to appear above myself, still keeping up some appearance.

At the work party here last year, Denise started cleaning forks for the dessert, and joshing me for not having enough, as so many younger people don't. I was puzzled, said nothing, checked the drawer, and there were still plenty of forks. Her assumption of superiority, especially since she was wrong, bothered me then, bothers me now. Why else, but that I'd done the work to be competent, and wasn't even given credit? Maybe she was getting back at me for not having a corkscrew.

And I worry about the homeless folk who walk this neighborhood being angry at me for having a house when they don't. The pair having a highly irrational and strangely amusing argument over their shopping cart in our driveway last night. She kept dropping something metallic that rang on the concrete.

"I don't need a servant. I don't need you as my servant to clean my house and I don't even have a house, and you're black and I bet you're related to Denzel Washington!"

Read Tied up in Tinsel by Ngaio Marsh this week, an insightfully oblique commentary on social class and money. Not pointed out in the text, just sitting in the background drawing no particular attention to itself.

Woke up thinking about inheritances. Not money, not valuables, but small objects. A cane made by my maternal grandfather, who died before I was born. I expressed a child's desire to have it for myself one day, and was sharply told it would go to my brother - who actually knew his grandfather - so it meant more to him. So, I didn't get a grandfather, and therefore don't get his cane either? Something similar for a little candy dish. No her DIL would get it, not me. When DIL died while I was in high school, I knew better than to ask if I were next in line for it. Everyone got there before me, I didn't count. And in the end, when the earlier ones were gone or didn't want the item, I wouldn't get it because someone else was closer to them, younger relatives. No one bothered with such niceties when I was the younger relative.

Why couldn't they have just said it wasn't nice to ask for someone to die? But they'd remember that I liked it? Why slam a small child, tell her she wasn't going to be worth it, that everyone else was more loved, more important, more to be considered? I valued them so much I wanted some little item that they loved to hold in my hand, and my hand was slapped away as being greedy. Wasn't greed.

Ultimately, all for the best. Less baggage, would have been broken as I escaped from the ex. Easier now to escape them. I had a copy of The Habitant and Other Poems by WH Drummond that my mother loved. I don't know why I had it. At some point, my oldest brother mentioned it - thinking it long lost, so I sent it to him. He was so grateful. For me, it felt like a farewell gift, releasing me from obligations I'd never incurred. There was so much talk of inheritance in my family, funny because there were no riches. Squabbling over trifles. Taking things, since love wasn't really on offer.

Maybe this is what I like about yard/estate sales. I'll take the treasures and earn my own love, not for seeming, for real.