Not an exact fit but it’s still a good song. Adele recently had throat surgery. Wishing you a speedy recovery!
Adele “Hometown Glory”
For some reason, I started thinking about the terrible 90’s movie “Made in America”. If you’re not familiar (spoiler alert), sharp-tongued, widowed, black, inner city bookstore owner (Whoopi Goldberg) finds out (through blood-typing in public high schools, really?) the sperm donor father of her teenage daughter (Nia Long) is not a random black man but in fact crazy, perpetual bachelor, over-the-top, pickup-truck-on-steroids-driving, crazy tv personality white car salesman (Ted Danson) . Whoopi and Ted fight and flirt and the start of a blended family emerges in time for Nia’s valedictorian speech. While rife with cliches and stereotypes, the movie is cute/entertaining enough. (It’s interesting to note that Goldberg and Danson actually dated in real life. That one still doesn’t make send to me but I digress…)
Yes, the premise of the movie is ridiculous but only somewhat plausible. In the case of these parents, their relationship began because of a baby they didn’t know they’d conceived together and a clerical error. Going beyond the ridiculousness, I began to think about the underlying message – No matter what their differences or how they came to be, blended families and inter-racial (or inter-generational, inter-religious, inter-political, mulit-lingual, etc) couples are becoming more common and less offensive to the general public. (I’d argue that the two are not one in the same.)
My family is a perfect example. I have 10 people in my immediate family. No, my parents were not rabbits. They were “progressive”. While there are key differences that are missing, my immediate family is definitely the most “blended” of anyone I’ve actually met. When explaining my family to the newbie who has no idea what they’re getting themselves into, I start by saying we are THE 90’s family. (Sometimes I wish could whip out a diagram with VH-1 graphics.) Most of the wonderful and terrible things that were said to happen the family structure in the 70’s and 80’s happened to my family. (Cue the curtain…)
In the beginning, there were three traditional couples married with children, same religions, same races. For various reasons, divorce entered the discussion and then there were six divorcees sharing five kids. Everyone married again and had more kids. The end. Kind of…
I am an only child of a black couple that once was. I have four parents, six siblings, one brother-in-law and a niece. We are black, white, bi-racial, multi-racial, mixed, college students, struggling twenty-somethings, parents in their 30’s, methodist, baptist, catholic, mormon, vegetarian (not a religion but when your dad’s a hunter with mounted deer heads and fish, it’s enough), reformed screw-ups, goodie-twoshoes, musically inclined, athletically blessed, step, half, whole, born into, invited to join and somewhere in-between. (As individuals, we are much more but who’s got time for all of that?) Half of the kids have two “homes”, while the other half may wish they had more than one. Some of us switched households for holidays and school breaks, while the others lost or gained siblings throughout the year. Sounds like fun, right? And for the most part it is. Budgeting Christmas presents and negotiating holiday schedules are the only times it truly sucks.
Let me point something out again: I am an only child with six siblings. In less than three year’s time, I went from the spoiled only child of divorced parents to the middle child of two households. Seriously, only to the middle! That’s any only child’s nightmare. Ok, enough of that…
There are several blog posts to be written about what it means to play any of those roles, especially the roles I fill. But for now, I’ll just end with one thought – Most families are like vanilla ice cream in a cake cone and that’s lovely. But we opted for the twist in a sugar cone, a bit more complicated but delicious just the same. I love the 90’s!
Thanksgiving in Phoenix and a Nashville Christmas? Sounds about right.
Jo’van
The Truth: According to Jo'van 