How does one talk about one’s parents without falling into the usual traps of sentimentality or its opposite? Without recourse to familiar narratives of support, opposition, nurturing or its absence? There is the temptation to qualify every statement I make with a disclaimer, a sign of embarrassment perhaps, so I shall do this all at once before I begin. Everyone has stories to tell about their parents. Each one of these stories is unique, touching, formative. Every parent-child relationship forms and grows within specific circumstances which render it special. Within every nurturing relationship there is the possibility of its absence, its distortion, its corruption. Laughter, love, anger, sadness, conflict, confusion...these and other emotions/states of mind are the building blocks of all relationships, and the claim of their presence in one acknowledges both the unique and the universal nature of the relationship being described. And the list could go on. But I suppose I shoul
making sense of the everyday