poser

Oh hai, kids. Happy October. Want to talk about a book I'm reading? Too bad.

It's called Poser: My Life in Twenty-three Yoga Poses by Claire Dederer. Yes, it's a yoga memoir, much like that book I hated. Apparently after Eat, Pray, Love made a gazillion dollars, this has become a genre, marketed to 30- to 50-something, middle class, liberal women like myself. Unlike that book I hated, Poser does not suck, mainly because the author is apparently an intelligent woman with some degree of self-awareness and the ability to reflect on her own actions and choices and explain them to an audience. One of the things she learns about herself in the course of the book is that because she had an unconventional childhood--her hippie mom left her dad for a younger man, but stayed married to him, and all three of them (her mom, her mom's boyfriend, and her dad) came to the same events even though her parents were legally still together--she as an adult is highly invested in creating a "perfect" nuclear family and thus denies the elephants in the living room, like her husband's severe depression or the fact that she is boiling over with resentment about how her parents and in-laws are always popping in and out of her house.

I find it kind of interesting that she was apparently so scarred by her parents' unconventional relationship. It's funny, because my good high school friend LL, who's been referenced here before, had a very similar situation in her life, though it occurred at a much older age than Ms Dederer's. Sometime when we were either towards the end of high school or the beginning of college (I can't remember, yo) LL's mother Diane, who was still married to and living with LL's dad, got herself a boyfriend, and they all apparently got along fine. I clearly remember attending LL's college graduation party with all three of them there. We, LL's friends, kinda thought, eh, that's a bit weird, but Diane's cool, we all love Diane, and just accepted it. If LL was embarrassed in any way, she never seemed it. She vaguely suggested that the reason her parents stayed legally married and living together was all financial, and that was that.

I guess my point in all this is, as a parent, you never know what you're going to do that'll screw your kids up. Or not screw your kids up. It's all a big mystery. I mean, I myself would think that your parents not legally divorcing even though they're living separate lives, and continuing to get along together wouldn't mess a person up, but apparently I'd be wrong in at least one case, right?

Eh. We gotta keep the therapists of the world employed. So there is that.

xoxo