the notion eludes definition

 

As I delve deeper into identity it gets hazier around the edges. The better I define the notion the more the notion eludes definition. 

I was raised in what could be called an Italian-American home. Don't question the Jesus, listen to the elders, eat something with tomato sauce on Sundays. I would later realize none of them knew their Christ in any meaningful way, the elders were mostly full of shit, and Italians from Italy never go so tomato mad. Such is life, we either die young or live long enough for our parents to become burdensome to us. 

I recently took a DNA test and I'm exactly 0% Italian. Which means the biological relatives I've known my whole life are also not Italian. Which makes sense since our weekly or even twice or thrice weekly family dinners eventually evolved their own kind of madness.

The crime scene would always look the same. Absent minded patriarch at the end of the table prattling off testosterone filled nonsense interjected with compliments to the chef. The chef and part-time matriarchal figure perched at the opposite end of the table would always warmly receive these compliments. My mother sat across from my younger brother and myself across from my stepfather who always insisted on being between my mother and her step father. 

The chef and grandmother-in-chief, having assembled and cooked enough food for twice the number present, would always lastly settle in her chair only after being assured of everyone else's contented initial experience with their meal. Once the party was all fully settled, we were all essentially stuck for an indeterminate amount of time until the first one was finished and could use the excuse of clean up to escape for a while into safety of the kitchen.

Aside from some sulky details I've provided, this seems like a somewhat normal family meal experience. Well, with a captive audience bad comedians take advantage. Most of my own desires around this experience revolved around fast food with a quick exit. Both of these received scorn and derision until I relented and just started reading books at the table. This new tactic received outright ridicule until I ceased the practice and would only bring myself to dinner. Without the physical act of looking over the spine of a book at the rest of the party, I was finally deemed acceptable or agreeable, maybe both. 

Well, the situation was not so agreeable with me and I would frequently express my displeasure. In order to chastise a child for "talk back" or "smart mouth" or whatever useless phrase is used to describe the irascibility of youth, you must not engage. If you engage with belligerence you become belligerence. You also lose whatever high ground you had because you chose to come down and exchange insults with a child. 

Looking back now, perhaps it was a show of respect for me when my mother and grandpa would directly argue with a teenage over dinner. Their tempers would quickly turn the argument to insults and I'd return fire, salvo for salvo. Raise the black flag, burn it down, get mean. Angry and full of angst, but also well read and well spoken enough to cause disturbed looks on their faces. My grandmother would get so flustered she'd need to leave the table early. Smartly, she purchased a bell. The kind you tap to summon a bell-hop except this bell was tapped to summon sanity. 

Ridicule followed the bell around for decades, but it worked. She trained us like some of Pavlov's best dogs. However, it was obviously an imperfect system. The bell was often misplaced, I think it was hidden on purpose but I was not the culprit, this would result in chaos days until the bell finally revealed itself once more. The majority of the post-bell period was more like controlled chaos. If I ever felt the need to snap a hurtful retort to something then I'd just catch a ding. A few dings was no big deal but every once in a while I felt like I was on a game show. 

I'm looking at that very same bell right now. After she died I found it and I took it and I didn't tell anyone I had it until last week when I sent a picture to my mother. Everyone had thought it was missing never to return (most explained the disappearance on my grandpa, who now has serious dementia issues and loses things constantly). I claimed it as my own. It feels like spoil of war that I've won through all my hard work over the years dishing out better than I received. 

Why the bell and not simply seclude or exclude me? Well, firstly that seems excessive even for this group. Secondly, I have more or less always carried the philosophy that retaliatory strikes are somehow more morally permissible. Ethically ambiguous instead of simply cruel or mean. Derision aimed at my younger brother or grandmother was never permitted. It was answered swiftly with a bell worthy insult nearly every time. I love banter and can shit-talk with the best but I also understand the nuance between the two. I felt like I was deftly navigating between the two but I was a kid and pretty dense at the time. I still am but I flow better now.

The bell was a compromise, an effort to moderate the good points on both sides. I have no idea what they actually thought of my occasional belligerence but I hoped I was some kind of protector for the two of us that usually did not speak up in their own defense. Do I believe they needed it? Yes, at the time. I have no idea now, maybe I interfered too early and all I accomplished was transforming myself into a part time bully's bully. I chose my fights and went hard with conviction. 

I saw myself as a kind of mean old junkyard dog. He's not getting out of his house for random folks going about their business. He's only concerned with the guy trying to jump the fence. That guy is gonna get his throat ripped out. I thought of myself as some kind of disinterested protector. Like some samurai that everyone thinks is sleeping but he's been listening the whole time. Suddenly he snaps into action and swiftly slits a throat and stabs an eye and then there's silence again.

Has anyone ever seen me as a protector or am I still that belligerent youth? How much of my identity is defined by the way others perceive me? The impossible veil between minds has descended again to thwart my efforts. What does it matter how I think I'm being perceived if it may be so wildly different from reality? 

The problem with this is in even thinking about being perceived. If I wanted to protect my grandmother from foul words directed at her, why not simply do it and be done with it? Why do I need to persist in the belief or even write about it today? Mindfulness is something I only learned later in life and have only in the last year or so started to practice actively. It would have helped during these dinners.