social networks
25 Jul 2006 07:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cimorenemom called to get all my bank information and my address and phone number from me again (this is the same address she's been sending packages to for a year now). she'd forgotten to wire me money yesterday and hadn't saved the information she needed, which somehow led her to the conclusion that dad's forgetfulness is sufficiently problematic to suggest that he did, in fact, sustain brain damage in his accident (according to the doctors, he didn't). don't worry, this conclusion doesn't make sense even if you know my mother; it just becomes funnier.
see, she told me that because dad didn't remind her to do it until after she was supposed to have done it already, she thinks something simply has to be wrong with him. "he'd never have forgotten something like this before," she said fretfully. she always would have, of course. i'm inclined to think it's more that in the past he would have been slightly less inclined to assume she could remember for 48 hours to do something just because it was urgent.
♥ in their own way my parents are as entertaining as wax's cats, or more so. i was just talking about how i've thought what it would be like to move back to alabama. it's funny that for all of my childhood i intended nothing more than to move away. the social attachments i formed there, mostly to people of my parents' generation - all my closest friends always have been adults; as a child i disliked other children intensely - were all formed by accident. i didn't come to realise their importance, to appreciate them or to miss them, until long after i first moved away. the first two years of college, i refused almost every opportunity to go to church again with my parents for fear of making smalltalk. it's only recently that i've thought about what it would be like to live as an adult now in my hometown, near my parents, with that social network available to me again. as glad as i am to no longer be in america and as impossible as it would be to live there without wax (i go insane if i live by myself, literally, and even more severely than when forced to live with my mother), i'm still regretful of that loss. i miss potlucks, dinner parties with wine, hiding easter eggs in the azalea bushes for other people's children, standing and talking at the end of the driveway. i find it hard to imagine ever belonging to a similar social network here. i wonder if it will happen someday and i'll be able to look back on these years the way my parents look back on those years when their livingroom was furnished with folding card tables and orange crates.
in fact, my father's an atheist and my mother a vaguely pagan-leaning agnostic (and recovered catholic) who doesn't care for religion organised or otherwise; my mother's often said she joined the congregation specifically to gain a social network, and it's repaid that investment a hundredfold over the years. wax says there is probably some similar secular thing here. this is true, because finnish people are great joiners in general, even though wax isn't. there's an incredible variety of clubs associated with the university of turku and åbo akademi, many of which look interesting. the problem is that i am not really a joiner either. my parents are, though they are otherwise nearly as antisocial as i am, so all my adult friends in life have been the result of their joining habits. it's not the same at all when it's a question of going to meet a bunch of finnish or even swedish-speaking people in a bar somewhere every couple of weeks to talk about whatever-it-is, especially since wax couldn't be persuaded to come along. (though i've considered the local science fiction society, because i could tag along with wax's friend sofia.)
see, she told me that because dad didn't remind her to do it until after she was supposed to have done it already, she thinks something simply has to be wrong with him. "he'd never have forgotten something like this before," she said fretfully. she always would have, of course. i'm inclined to think it's more that in the past he would have been slightly less inclined to assume she could remember for 48 hours to do something just because it was urgent.
♥ in their own way my parents are as entertaining as wax's cats, or more so. i was just talking about how i've thought what it would be like to move back to alabama. it's funny that for all of my childhood i intended nothing more than to move away. the social attachments i formed there, mostly to people of my parents' generation - all my closest friends always have been adults; as a child i disliked other children intensely - were all formed by accident. i didn't come to realise their importance, to appreciate them or to miss them, until long after i first moved away. the first two years of college, i refused almost every opportunity to go to church again with my parents for fear of making smalltalk. it's only recently that i've thought about what it would be like to live as an adult now in my hometown, near my parents, with that social network available to me again. as glad as i am to no longer be in america and as impossible as it would be to live there without wax (i go insane if i live by myself, literally, and even more severely than when forced to live with my mother), i'm still regretful of that loss. i miss potlucks, dinner parties with wine, hiding easter eggs in the azalea bushes for other people's children, standing and talking at the end of the driveway. i find it hard to imagine ever belonging to a similar social network here. i wonder if it will happen someday and i'll be able to look back on these years the way my parents look back on those years when their livingroom was furnished with folding card tables and orange crates.
in fact, my father's an atheist and my mother a vaguely pagan-leaning agnostic (and recovered catholic) who doesn't care for religion organised or otherwise; my mother's often said she joined the congregation specifically to gain a social network, and it's repaid that investment a hundredfold over the years. wax says there is probably some similar secular thing here. this is true, because finnish people are great joiners in general, even though wax isn't. there's an incredible variety of clubs associated with the university of turku and åbo akademi, many of which look interesting. the problem is that i am not really a joiner either. my parents are, though they are otherwise nearly as antisocial as i am, so all my adult friends in life have been the result of their joining habits. it's not the same at all when it's a question of going to meet a bunch of finnish or even swedish-speaking people in a bar somewhere every couple of weeks to talk about whatever-it-is, especially since wax couldn't be persuaded to come along. (though i've considered the local science fiction society, because i could tag along with wax's friend sofia.)
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 25 Jul 2006 06:31 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 26 Jul 2006 09:43 am (UTC)maybe we should get together soon. i was thinking about posting about it, but i saw you were feeling extra anxious and i thought you probably wouldn't want to go out.
(no subject)
Date: 26 Jul 2006 02:50 pm (UTC)And, yeah. I'm bad with big groups too. They make me anxious because there's too much going on and I can't follow the conversation too well.
(no subject)
Date: 26 Jul 2006 03:24 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 26 Jul 2006 03:33 pm (UTC)Um. I wonder if we're thinking of the same bridge. I've tended to avoid the place because it's so noisy, what with the traffic and all. I didn't even know there's a dam there. :}
(no subject)
Date: 26 Jul 2006 03:36 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 27 Jul 2006 02:44 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 27 Jul 2006 07:34 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 27 Jul 2006 06:05 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 28 Jul 2006 10:42 am (UTC)