who's story is this anyway?
had a shockingly long and delightful four-hour dinner with joe tonight. who said americans don't enjoy themselves at a leisurely meal?!
during our four courses including creamy viennese walnut cake, we hit on all the major topics: birth, death, deceits, the mammies and the pappies--not the '60s rock group with michelle phillips, but the phrase i stole from joe, who stole it from his mom. it refers to mammograms and pap-smears. ha-HAAAA! that joe....
at one point joe told me the tale of his family origins--so far as he knows them. the story begins at ellis island, where joe discovered in a flurry of research that his great-greatgrandmother and his greatgrandmother landed in the u.s., having emigrated from poland when his grandmother was three months old.
got all that?
of course the story doesn't actually begin there. but you knew that, didn't you?
it begins someplace earlier in detroit, where his polish greatgrandfather had been working for five years preparing to bring his polish wife and her polish mother to the states.
now keep in mind, i don't tell you that this story is delightful because of the implications its finale has on joe's family but on the assumptions it tears right from the curtain rod--the one we have about how back in the day or in today's day (or insert your prefered era here), people act/-ed differently...better...more civilized...more something... surely. right?
so back to today and joe and his recent flurry of research during his ellis island visit. it seems as he was reading the ship logs from his family's turn-of-the-century travels from old country to new, he discovered--together with his ellis island research assistant bea (who has been dubbed such because she looked like bea arthur from "golden girls")...the inscription scrawled on the records over his then-baby grandmother's name...the word...
"illigitimate"
joe's shockingly long-and-delightfully held family myth dissolved in front of bea's eyes.
because, despite the strange connotations the word conjures--i l l i g i t i m a t e--a little math will show pretty quickly that when a guy who's been gone for five years shows up at home to collect his wife (luuuuuuuuuucy, iiiiiiiii'm hooooooooooooome!) and discovers her five months' pregnant, somethin's not quite ligitimate.
now for me the question is not who's kid is it? but rather why are we still so shocked that this is really the oldest story there is?.
during our four courses including creamy viennese walnut cake, we hit on all the major topics: birth, death, deceits, the mammies and the pappies--not the '60s rock group with michelle phillips, but the phrase i stole from joe, who stole it from his mom. it refers to mammograms and pap-smears. ha-HAAAA! that joe....
at one point joe told me the tale of his family origins--so far as he knows them. the story begins at ellis island, where joe discovered in a flurry of research that his great-greatgrandmother and his greatgrandmother landed in the u.s., having emigrated from poland when his grandmother was three months old.
got all that?
of course the story doesn't actually begin there. but you knew that, didn't you?
it begins someplace earlier in detroit, where his polish greatgrandfather had been working for five years preparing to bring his polish wife and her polish mother to the states.
now keep in mind, i don't tell you that this story is delightful because of the implications its finale has on joe's family but on the assumptions it tears right from the curtain rod--the one we have about how back in the day or in today's day (or insert your prefered era here), people act/-ed differently...better...more civilized...more something... surely. right?
so back to today and joe and his recent flurry of research during his ellis island visit. it seems as he was reading the ship logs from his family's turn-of-the-century travels from old country to new, he discovered--together with his ellis island research assistant bea (who has been dubbed such because she looked like bea arthur from "golden girls")...the inscription scrawled on the records over his then-baby grandmother's name...the word...
"illigitimate"
joe's shockingly long-and-delightfully held family myth dissolved in front of bea's eyes.
because, despite the strange connotations the word conjures--i l l i g i t i m a t e--a little math will show pretty quickly that when a guy who's been gone for five years shows up at home to collect his wife (luuuuuuuuuucy, iiiiiiiii'm hooooooooooooome!) and discovers her five months' pregnant, somethin's not quite ligitimate.
now for me the question is not who's kid is it? but rather why are we still so shocked that this is really the oldest story there is?.
posted by stacy muszynski at 10:55 PM
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