View from the North 40: Free tickets to the funhouse

Visiting family is like looking at yourself in a funhouse mirror. You know you are seeing yourself reflected back, but everything is skewed, cockeyed and out of proportion. Some of the reflections scare you, but some make you laugh out loud.

Half my family tree was lost in the divorce. Not my divorce, but my choice of tree branch to follow. Admittedly, I was young and very much interested in self-preservation of my early teenage psyche, but still I lost touch with half my family, half the genetic explanation of me. It was a bit like having an epidural. Your lower half is still there, but deadened to you so you don’t feel pain from it or have to think about it even.

The thing is, though, it’s still there. Your lower half, which is, of course, a metaphor for family, some of which haunts you. Just because you can’t feel it, that doesn’t mean the family isn’t there.

So maybe you visit the estranged family a few times, but all you see are the bad things that you tried to numb away.

You imagine that you are destined to be an awkward, hickish, impoverished hoarder with a sense of style based partly on what was popular back when you cared about such things and partly on what you can buy for cheap in a super-dooper sale or at the secondhand store.

You see your future and it’s dressed in a 20-year-old style, maybe 30, and a crocheted beer can hat.

Also, the funhouse mirror closest to you has dark shadows and the reflection is a little bit mortifying, so you don’t want to repeat the experience.

And by “you,” of course, I mean “me.” The odds are unlikely that your childhood and early adulthood were the same as mine, so this is all on me.

I remember when I was younger looking out at this odd collection of too many relatives in one location and feeling like an alien among them.

I’m here to say, though, that things change. Things did change. I changed. My perspective changed. More visiting has occurred, visits like last weekend, visits that turn out to be good for the soul.

I walked among my family, my people and saw that they were good. And odd. And fun. And me. A funhouse version of me that I wanted to look at.

Oh, sure, at least one relative is a hoarder, but a good number of them could be called collectors, collectors of things they find interesting. That’s me.

There were book lovers and horse people and jokers and artists and wiseacres and people living frugally, not thinking so much about getting ahead as they were about living for the experience. Everywhere there were glimpses of myself — a physical feature (yeah, so many versions of my nose and the squint lines), a gesture (shrug much anyone?), a laugh (loud), an awkwardness (we danced — don’t ask), a life choice (or two).

They have a strong sense of family and generations, and they could be awkward and odd and interesting and amazing together. And they were themselves to the world without apologies or explanation for their foibles.

And the funhouse turned out to be a place I could call home any time I want to visit.

——

(No epidural or proof of vaccinations required before admittance at [email protected].)