The Women in My Family

It was during a well-populated social event six years ago. A few friends and I were talking about my extended family. One of my friends asked a question of my cousin and I:

"Why do the men in your family die so young?"

My cousin's response:

"Have you met the women in my family?"

Some laughed; some were offended. None of the women in my family were close enough to hear it.

Though it was one of the funniest statements ever uttered, my cousin (who is on the Egyptian side of my family - i.e., my father's side) and I both believed there was an element of truth to it. By 2001, both of our fathers were dead, as was another uncle and a cousin. Another cousin died three years later, and long ago, just prior to my birth, another uncle died. That's six male relatives, all dead before 60 and not a single female relative on that side of the family gone too young.

But were the women to blame? As a man in the family, I'll try to answer. (Women, you may respond in the comments section.)

The Egyptian side of our family is a matriarchy. My immediate (Swedish-Egyptian) family is also a matriarchy. Fathers were absent (deceased, at work, in Canada). Mothers were omnipresent - always home, always watching, always giving their opinions (which is not to say they were good communicators.) At extended family gatherings, women would congregate loudly in the kitchen and dining room, carrying the crown that making dinner earned them. Men would sit quietly in the living room, watching Cronkite on the evening news, cursing Israel (aloud) and their women (silently). In my family, on weekends with my Dad out of town or at work, we'd go to the mall. The females would shop while I'd kill time in record stores and book stores, collecting the mass of knowledge I hold today.

Then there were the smaller family outings during the Pennsylvania summers. A typical one would be: me, Mom, the sister, and my two male cousins are packed too tightly in a car with towels and a cooler. We are driving to Lake Nockamixon. A song from Bruce Springsteen's The River or Steely Dan's Gaucho is likely playing on classic rock WMMR. By the time we arrive at the swampy lake and its kid-crowded over-chlorinated accompanying pool, the five of us, through our bickering and its attendant silence, have established the hierarchy that will govern us for the rest of the humid afternoon, the hierarchy that will determine who stays by the towels when the others swim, who has to stand in line for the French fries while the others tan:

Top of hierarchy: Mother
Next: The sister
Then: The younger (male) cousin (i.e., the miracle child)
Then: Me
Bottom: The older (male) cousin

What can't be shown here is the great divide between spots two and three of the hierarchy. Between the sister and the miracle child there is an abyss of matronly ghosts (like that of the cousins' absent-for-the-summer mother) and female pop culture icons (e.g., Princess Di, the Mom from Eight is Enough, Laura from General Hospital, both Alice and Carol from the Brady Bunch... maybe even Marcia). What these absent women believed - what they would do in any given situation - held more sway with the women who were indeed present than what any man in the entire world would do, with the possible exceptions of Springsteen and the revered corpses of Sadat and Nasser.

But we were kids then. In 2001, my cousin and I were well into adulthood. Shouldn't we have gotten over our childhood/adolescent maternal angst? Well, here's a smattering of examples from the last ten years that support the thesis that perhaps the women in our family still annoy the hell out of the men:

(actually, before I list these examples, let me say that I am not bitter. What doesn't kill me, what only kills the others, makes me stronger. )

Ex. 1: A male family member (called MFM from now on) is involuntarily locked away somewhere. When it's time to send him a care package, a female family member (FFM) goes out of her way to ensure that fewer items are included in the package. She says "He only needs one book."

Ex. 2: At a Japanese steakhouse in the Inland Empire, MFM expresses an admirable interest to go to medical school. FFM, scoffing at the notion, actually encourages him not to become a doctor. She says "You should go into computers."

Ex. 3: At a wedding for one MFM, another MFM is scheduled to give a touching reading from a Dr. Seuss book. When it's his turn to take the stage - as clearly indicated in the schedule - FFM leaps from her seat and reads a fucking Rumi poem that wasn't pre-approved.

There are other examples that are only half-remembered by the principals (parking space debates, going to the wrong dentist, warnings about quicksand, wearing the wrong kind of shoes on the slippery rocks, selling your son's car, leaving him carless in Los Angeles, etc.) but let it be known that only the mere surface has been scratched here.

What's my underlying thesis? That the women have nagged the men to death or into an adulthood of angst? No, it's more complex than that, their influence more subtle. The track record of the adult relationships of the males in my generation has been spotty (restraining orders, divorces, celibacy). Sure, we have to take some responsibility ourselves but I think there's something from our past influencing the intimacy difficulties some of us have now. But, perhaps more than the omnipresence of our mothers' and sisters' collective hovering, there is the issue of the absence of our fathers. That's another topic for another post. I'll just say here that they - the fathers - could have done something about it.

I discuss this topic today because of the recent death of the strongest woman in the family - an aunt in Egypt who both physically and psychologically held sway over us in the New Jersey of my early youth. She's wasn't as young as the men when she died but it did come too soon, too tragically. Still, despite the odds against her (early widowhood, three children to feed, living in two nations, her role as the matriarch of the matriarchy), she lived way past the age that a comparable male in the family would.

A cynic would suggest that the fact that most of those men smoked and were overweight had something to do with their early deaths. (My cousin's likely response: Wouldn't you smoke and eat too much if you were them? And what's up with cooking everything with loads of butter and oil?) I like my theory better - it would be overreaching to call it a familial culture of methodical and metaphorical poisoning. It would be easier to call it a female revenge fantasy. Basic Instinct was once my sister's favorite movie. The Last Seduction is my (male) cousin's favorite. Watch them both and it all makes sense.