an undercurrent of hostility UPDATE

The beautiful unintended consequence of laying bare my insecurity for all to see was all the excellent and brilliant comments left on the post under this one. Thank you all so much.

I'm moving my mother's comment up here, for you all to see because she really explained it better than I did, and is inspiring me to write the painful autobiographical examples of hostility from my youth. Here's what she said.

It's obviously time I straightened out the writer of this blog. The first time I ever heard anyone talk about an "undercurrent of hostility" was when this blog writer's very own father (not yet married to ME but about to be) showed up in Portland Oregon the week before the wedding and met my large (8 kids 2 parents) family and felt that while we were all very polite there was a certain measure of quiet insanity in the household and an undercurrent of hostility. Which of course became our new family joke. Always an undercurrent of hostility and it HAS to be an undercurrent when you are for the moment living in an Tzeltal village in Mexico for instance, and being constantly watched, or are having to share a kitchen in France with someone you barely know and can barely stand, or when you have to learn strange tongues in small villages in West Africa where the gossip mill runs deep and clear. It's been a family joke for all these many years.

But today, the hostility isn't in evidence at all. It is luxuriously warm and hazy (60 degrees), and we're going to sit down for some school in a few minutes, and I've hung my copper pots over the sink in an excessively pleasing way, and there are no board meetings or vestry meetings or anything, and I can't think of anything to complain about so I won't go on writing. See you tomorrow.