It’s been a long week. It’s Saturday now. I worked only four days this week, and work was the least of my worries. The four-day workweek was not because of a holiday but because I was out on Monday for my cousin’s funeral. Just a few days ago, but it seems like ages.
The funeral was very sad. I’m not especially close to my aunt anymore (thanks Fox News). The man I still refer to as my uncle, who was always exceptionally kind to me when I was a child, is no longer married to my aunt. She remarried many years ago to a man who is pleasant and polite, but also a Trump worshipper, and so I generally avoid conversation with him because there’s nothing you can say about anything that he can’t run through the MAGA filter and throw right back at you. It’s not worth it.
But my aunt is still my aunt and my Godmother (and she still introduces me as her Godchild) and I still love her. And even if I didn’t, how could I possibly not feel compassion for a 78-year-old woman who just lost her only daughter. At 78, a person must feel that no matter what else goes wrong, at least you’ve passed the danger of outliving a child. Having witnessed it several times, I can confidently say that the saddest thing in the world is watching parents bury their children, no matter the age.
*****
My cousin was a girly girl. She loved boy bands and makeup and hairstyling and fashion. She didn’t like sports. It’s always easy for men and boys and some women, too, to mock and ridicule girls like her, and my cousin endured quite a bit of that kind of “humor” from her brother and her uncles and cousins. Even in his eulogy, her brother (also my cousin, obviously) joked about her clothes and her ineptitude at softball and her NKOTB fandom. And he loved his sister, and could barely get through his remarks without breaking down, but making fun of a girl because she’s a girl is just part of the language among working class Catholics. Misogyny is both born and bred in our families. The men and boys ridicule us for having two X chromosomes and we have two possible ways to respond: You can get upset, knowing that absolutely no one will defend you and that they will in fact very likely yell at you to “get a sense of humor;” or you can laugh along to show what a “good sport” you are.
*****
When I was young, I wished that I was the good sport type of girl, the cool girl who rolls with the punches and doesn’t get mad at her sexist classmates and brother and cousins and uncles and dad and grandfather (yeah, it was pretty much everywhere). But I was not a cool girl, and I’m glad now that I wasn’t. I’m glad I got upset every time someone said that I ran like a girl or threw a ball like a girl. I’m glad that I got mad when my brother didn’t have to help with dishes or cooking or laundry or cleaning because “he’s a boy.” I’m glad that I got furious at every boy who pulled up my skirt or snapped my bra strap. I’m glad I knew that none of that was OK. And guess what? The cool girls knew it too. And they were raging the whole time - they just didn’t want anyone to know.
*****
When she was young, my cousin tried to be a cool girl. We were not contemporaries, really - I am 12 years older - but I saw her often enough when she was a teenager and young woman to know that she wanted to come across as casually cool and nonchalant, like a girl who didn’t care about her hair or her makeup or her reputation. I was old enough to tell her not to pretend to be something she wasn’t, but I didn’t tell her that. Nothing would have been less helpful. No teenage girl wants to hear that she just needs to “be herself.” She’d have bristled at the very idea that she wasn’t 100 percent authentic and real. But as she got older, she became more like herself - feminine in a girly way, vulnerable, even needy. She was the kind of girl and the kind of woman that people describe as “a bit much.” She never married and didn’t have serious relationships, and most people would think that she didn’t have much of a life. Maybe she didn’t. She struggled with drugs and alcohol and was often unhappy. But she had friends. She loved her friends and their children, and she loved animals, and she loved music and fashion and movies and TV and pretty things. I hope she’s at peace now.