outsideness

Recently, I wrote about a healthier response to a once devastating funky family dynamic -  Instead of beating myself up for over half a lifetime of trying to heal a relationship that couldn't because it wasn't, felt a detached interest in the sting, in the fact that having my outsideness brought home still stung.

Outsideness.  Yes, that was how I felt & feel in my family.  What makes it interesting rather than devastating is acknowledging that a sense of outsideness always & forever seemed to permeate my family.  

How far back did it start?  At least to Mom's teen years.  Tucked into a  Mindwalker1910 e-mail about her 1928 high school graduation was the memory of the dance dress her Mom sent from Baltimore.  My grandmother was in Baltimore, while Mom lived in the "settlement," a temporary townie, not a dorm gal.  AKM, not DEKA.  But she actual home was over 100 miles away.  From Mom's teens, she was used to being part of Bryn Athyn, not fully.  In my experience, that sense stayed with her for all of her life, then passed down to me, intensified by Mim's influence.

In my early twenties, something Bishop Pendleton said in Dad's memorial address stood out, like it was written in neon lights ~ "Pete & Kay made their home amongst us," meaning they settled down in Bryn Athyn.  "Amongst us" just seemed & seems strange phrasing - with yet somehow separate.  At least, that's how it hit me.

Then, there's Peter & Mim.  My oldest brother & my sister have always struck me as feeling outside our family, albeit in very different ways.  Then, too, they strike me as feeling outside their very selves.

Being someone who wildly advocates connection & relationship, outsideness is about the worst sensation I can imagine.  It must be exhausting.  At least, it would be for me.  Am glad my outside days are past, that I recognize that while I'm not an outside person.  Am not an inside person, either.  

Inside people - ones who only relate to people within their millieu, be it family and/or faith, college or country club.  That's even less my style than outsideness!

Guess I'm an everyone everywhere type.  

Remembering a long ago Christmas workshop with Amy Grubb Childs.  She asked us to bring one thing we were willing to give up.  I said, "Wanting to connect with everyone."   Amy nodded in self recognition, noting how we want to connect with family over the holidays.  Oh, I hadn't meant just family - I literally meant EVERYONE.  One of many reasons I love preparing refreshments for after-service gatherings at church, for Cairnwood Village's Monday Minister teas, for the college & for cast parties.  Feeds that "everyone" longing.  

Face it - have always & forever LOVED people & always harbored at least a teensy smidgen of personal self worth.  Maybe, given the challenges some of my family face, that makes me the ultimate outsider in the Lockhart-Reynolds clan!