The latest one addresses yet another monumental split in my life, like the American-English one, and the church music-divine feminine one. I didn't realize it, but my renewed interest in antiques has been the prelude to examining another seemingly unbridgeable chasm in this lifetime's experience: that is, coming from a family with the upper-est of upper crust leanings and tastes, but nothing to support that lifestyle. In one day, really, we went from at least the appearance of grandeur to the depths of poverty, and for years I returned from college or my job in New York to find no food in my parents' refrigerator or gas in the car. I did what I could to help, but several factors hindered my effectiveness: I was paying back enormous student loans; I didn't fully understand what was going on; and discussion of the situation was prohibited. "Family" had become a strange netherworld about which nothing could be said. At events like weddings, funerals or graduations, our extended family seemed to be WASP top drawer (an English friend said it was like being with the royal family), but the day-to-day reality of my immediate family was grinding poverty. There had been an ephemeral few years of relative abundance around my early teens, but from then on for many years, it was all downhill, a trajectory which my own adult life has largely mirrored.
When I was in my late twenties, my great aunt (in some despair about my prospects) gifted me with a copy of the "Social Register," the yearbook that to this day helps old money people keep track of their own. That was ostensibly her world, her tribe, and she hoped that I would find a nice husband in it. But of course that train had already left the station. Some of my relatives might be in the book, but not anyone else I was meeting in the normal course of events. Although I can enthusiastically "do" Upper East Side cocktail parties (and their equivalent) I just didn't gravitate to that crowd, nor they to me. With no country clubs or investments or interior designers in my life, conversation soon faltered. Even if a really well-connected or successful man had taken to me, one visit to meet my parents (living in a poorly-winterized summer cabin in the north country) would have brought the budding relationship to a screeching halt. The truth is that by the age of thirty or so, I had shed my blue blood heritage just as I was shedding England and English church music, things that were too painful to think about or be chronically on the outskirts of.
Yet while YWCAs and food shelves and city buses have been a big part of my reality, the folks in that world and I aren't really of the same tribe either. I am sorry to say that snobbery was my early fallback; it has been largely transformed into empathy (I literally understand and have walked a version of the same path), but my education, mannerisms, speaking voice, and life experiences continue to make me feel from another planet. And you might think, like some social mathematical equation, that you could split the difference and simply aim for the American suburban middle class, but that never worked either. To be honest, that is the "place" (or "tribe") I feel the most uncomfortable with. I am at least somewhat "of" the two ends, but not the middle.
Clearly I have not resolved this. But I'm glad this wave has finally hit me. Halting, tentative steps to "like what I like" (yes, including antique silver and oil paintings) are at least grounded in truth and genuine love.
In the end, being as post-"everything" as I have become, I suspect that I am not simply a member of a pre-existing tribe, but potentially influential in new one. Perhaps both heritages will help me be that leader, once I'm not ashamed of and running from them.
