Nesting Dolls of Science

This reflection comes from a series of facebook posts by my family.  And with all things, because I am one hell of a defensive human being, I’m going to give a little context. My fiancé and I rarely eat at home.   We both work full time, and for a teacher that means 11+ hour days every weekday.   I get home around 6-6:30, and he gets home around the same time.   Generally, the best we can do is pop something frozen in the microwave a rock what I like to call fancy hotdogs.   What are fancy hot dogs?   The nicer sausages at safeway that have stuff in them.   Like apples or mangoes or your hopes and dreams.   The usual.   As a woman, people began to give me a little grief that I couldn’t “Take care of my home.”   Did my fiancé hear this?   Not sure, he doesn’t talk much.   However, I will always bow to societal pressure, so I started making dinner on Sunday nights because we had a little more time and it left me a ...

This is strange for me to write, because I will never admit it aloud to anyone no matter the physical cost, but I am very much like my mother.   Not to say this a bad thing.   My mother is warm and strong, the epitome of a Midwestern turned Californian transplant.   I am so happy to be her daughter.   However, we have definitely had our moments of conflict.   Recently, I talked to her about it, and she said, “I don’t remember us fighting much.” “But don’t you remember when I made you so mad you cried?” “When was that?” “I was in high school.” She looked at me as if I was tap dancing in a tutu, which I would never do. “Really?   I don’t remember that.” I think this proves the strength of my mother’s selective memory.   I also recall our yelling battles when I returned home from college for more than two days, when I started coming home most weekends when my now fiancé and I were dating, when I intro...

I come from a family of makers, so when I began writing down stories of them, I figured writing what they made was the most sensible.  The DIY trend was not a trend for me in my life, it is my life.   My mother comes by the making rather naturally.   Both of my maternal grandparents were Midwestern children of the depression, and making items was useful as well as necessary.   They were incredibly resourceful people, a trait which they passed down to their children.   On my father’s side, I think my grandparents were makers for pleasure.   My grandmother doodled and wrote all her life, and had the creative clean chaos in her home that I so understand as an adult.   I’m not sure about my grandfather.   From stories passed down through my family, I know he was handy, but I’m not sure how well he was handy.   The evidence of this is the deck in my parents’ back yar...