the dance

Today is Bryan Fullerton's birthday! Bryan is the guy who hosts all our Web sites, including the Electric Penguin message boards. Jeff and I are going to his birthday bash later today.

My dad's staying with us; yesterday afternoon he and I went to see Lord of the Rings again (his choice). It was my fifth time, his second.

Having my father stay with us reminds me of my childhood and the family dynamics back home. We've always had a close family, but we were never physically demonstrative; hugs and kisses were rare events. It took me years to get used to the affectionate hug greetings so common at sf and filk conventions. I gave Dad a hug yesterday before going to bed, and he was all awkward about it. :-)

Our family bond, however, was and still is super-close. Ruth and I don't tend to do the stereotypical openly gushy-sister thing, for instance, but we've always been fiercely protective of each other. We may have bickered and had the usual sisterly squabbles over silly things, but if anyone did anything to hurt one of us...look out for the other! :-)

Family communication back in my childhood was very Japanese. Very little open conflict, but lots of layers of complicated subtle meanings and implications that could only be interpreted with years of experience growing up with us. Conflicts were resolved in an elaborate dance of half-hints and silences laden with meaning. And if we wanted something, we rarely asked for it directly; we had to gently guide the other person (through the same sort of subtle communication methods) into realizing that we wanted it.

Jeff and I had a lot of blow-outs in the beginning of our relationship because he refused to communicate with me this way.

Example:

JEFF: "What's wrong?"

ME (mad at him): "Nothing."

JEFF: "There's something wrong, I can tell."

ME: "No, everything's fine, really."

JEFF: "You're mad at me. What set you off?"

ME: "Nothing set me off!"

etc. etc.

After a long (agonizing) while, I learned the value of being more direct, of hashing things out in the open early on instead of letting things drag on, building up resentment, and to ask for things directly (even if it means risking the humiliation of rejection). I still have problems with this, but I'm getting better. It's complicated things between Jeff and me, though, because he still can't help but try to interpret what I say and do according to what I was like back in the early days (e.g. if I say nothing's wrong, then he thinks it means I'm hiding something).

Anyway, it was interesting to be reminded by my experience in Philly that the corporate world is much more Japanese this way, with its own set of unwritten rules of communication. Blunt honesty is usually not regarded as a good thing, and those who want to succeed in the corporate environment have to learn how to play the game like everyone else, be a team player even if you don't always agree with what the team's doing, not cause waves.

I'm not very good at this, though I suspect would have been better ten years ago. On the whole, this is probably a good thing.

I still have too much of my childhood ingrained in me to completely forget the elaborate dance. In fact, I'm doing it right now. This whole Blathering basically boils down to me saying that though my Dad still drives me nuts sometimes, I love him like crazy.

:-)

Today's Blatherpic:

Allison in the hallway at Ad Astra. This is one the expressions she puts on when I take a photo of her when she doesn't want me to take a photo of her. I think it's pretty cute, don't you?