Karen and Nikki and I talk a lot about what people think and feeling guilty. When Nikki didn’t have any luck nursing Jennifer, she was mortified. Then when Ilsa was born, she felt she had to try again, or everyone would think she was a quitter. When it didn’t work out, she kept the nursing gear around and always told her mother and her sisters that she was just giving the baby a “supplementary bottle.” In a pinch, she would excuse herself and take the baby into the bedroom.
Karen says that when her mother comes over, she has to hide all the organic food, because her mother thinks it’s too expensive and people who buy it are dupes of the food industry because it really doesn’t make any difference and the food probably isn’t organic in the first place.
Anyway. It seemed to be a rite of passage in the Unitarian Church for teenagers to decide they didn’t want a part of any religion. So they didn’t go and their parents would talk to the other parents and be reassured that they would get over it, particularly if the rest of the family started going out for fancy lunches or to the movies after church and did not go back home to get them. Of course, after the prodigal started attending again, they had to keep up with the outings, which wasn’t a bad thing.
I didn’t rebel until I went to college and became an Episcopalian. My mother was mortified, but her friends were very supportive and told her that at least if I was a Jesus freak, I probably wouldn’t have sex before I was married. Aunt Pooh told me this years later and added that that was comforting, because if there’s one thing more upsetting than the idea of your parents having sex, it’s the idea of your children doing it, even if they’re married. Aunt Pooh said she likes to think her grandchildren were left at the door in baskets or were picked up at the hospital.
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