Families

Sedaris siblings as kids
Clockwise from top left:
Gretchen, Lisa, David, Tiffany,
Paul, and Amy  

How could anyone purposefully leave us -- us, of all people?  This is how I thought of it, for though I've often lost faith in myself, I've never lost faith in my family, in my certainty that we are fundamentally better than everyone else.  It's an archaic belief, and one I haven't seriously reconsidered since my late teens, but still I hold it.  Ours is the only club I'd ever wanted to be a member of, so I couldn't imagine quitting.  Backing off for a year or two was understandable, but to want out so badly that you'd take your own life?

--David Sedaris, Calypso, "Now We Are Five"

Sedaris is stunned that his youngest sister, Tiffany, has committed suicide.  When you're privileged to be a Sedaris, he thinks, why would you give it all up by voluntarily dying?

So, I think to myself,  I'm not unique.  I'm not the only person who's always felt that being a member of my family somehow lifted me above the common herd.  Not that we're the best family on the face of the earth, but certainly way above those we've encountered in our own lives.  It's clear that our Christmas traditions, our family jokes, our style of vacations, not only differ from others, but are easily better than those of our would-be peers by any objective standard.

From an objective point of view, admittedly, one might question Sedaris's faith in his family.  He himself -- and I speak of his persona in his essays, not knowing how exaggerated that picture might be -- is an entire constellation of neuroses.  As a child, he suffered severely from obsessive-compulsive disorder, forcing him to face an exhausting list of items that he was required to touch each day on his way home from school.  He has put his OCD to a slightly less irrational use as an adult: Starting out with the common goal of walking 10,000 steps, or four miles, per day, he quickly demanded more and more of himself, ultimately spending most of each day walking 25 to 30 miles, and picking up highway litter as he walked.  He claims, probably truthfully, that his region of West Sussex, where he now lives as an adult, is stunningly litter-free compared with surrounding areas.

He was a mediocre student in school, and an ambitious but untalented art student in college.  He spent years doing menial labor, his brain addled by an amazing assortment of drugs.  His life for years was one series of humiliations after another.  I haven't yet read an essay explaining how he transitioned from this unpromising beginning into a world-famous comic speaker and writer, but it's probably out there somewhere to be read.

His four sisters were each different, and all more or less weird.  There was Tiffany, who lived in squalor for years, ignoring her family.  The personalities of the other three girls are less precisely defined, but together they were the type who, once the first joys of childhood were past, spent their time at the beach avoiding the water and stretched out on a blanket working on their tans.  David's brother Paul, the youngest child and the only one born in North Carolina, where they all grew up, rather than upstate New York, where the others were born, was the kind of guy who could not speak a simple declaratory sentence without including at least three obscenities.

The mother was a character, who could charm everyone, including her family, assisted by the glass of wine in her hands.  The father? David was convinced that his father had never felt any affection whatsoever for him, only contempt -- from David's earliest memories until his father finally thawed a bit as he approached his 90s.

Not only was each member of the family dysfunctional in one or more ways, but so, consequently, was the family as a unit.

And yet, David feels they were and are better people than anyone else -- the only club he ever wanted to be a member of.

Every member of my family, none more so than myself, is weird in varying degrees.  And so must the entire ensemble appear to those who know us well.  And yet, I can truthfully say that none of us is as weird as the least weird of the Sedaris family, at least as portrayed by their famous son.  So my professed belief in the perfection of my own family passes what we lawyers call "the straight face test" -- i.e., I could profess it in court, looking the judge in they eye as I spoke.

I do not contend that every family evidences this same chauvinism; I've spoken with too many sad folks who hate their families and avoid them at all costs.  Even David's sister Tiffany refused to communicate with her parents and siblings in her final years, leaving behind -- as a shock for her heirs -- boxes full of family photos which she had torn into small pieces.

But, even admitting such exceptions, it does seem to be human nature to feel pride in one's family, however odd that family may seem to others, and to be convinced of its superiority -- not so much for its achievements as the world sees them but for the private secrets and traditions known perhaps only to themselves .  Thus the House of Lancaster was pitted against the House of York.  Thus the Tudors and Stuarts.  And the Roosevelts and Clintons.  Families whose members sincerely believe they belong to the Finest Club Ever. 

Even when, or especially when, they suspect that no other club would have them.