caught between a pragmatist and a dreamer

My dad was the first, my mom the second - dad was the hard-headed, sarcastic, cynical, 'suffering-builds-character,' tough love type; my mom was the head-in-the-clouds, impractical, childlike dreamer who distracted herself through much of my childhood by focusing on the nitty-gritty details of motherhood: Laundry, cooking, cleaning. I sometimes think that some mothers obsess with the details of their 'job' because they're having to sublimate so much else about who they are through this tiny, narrow, supremely inadequate aperture. The typical middle class suburban housewife (and my mom was/is pretty typical for her generation, I think) is trapped like a fly in amber - can't move in any which direction, except down that narrow path expected by the father and the culture, namely as his primary emotional supporter and 'helpmeet', his own personal secretary and cheerleader.

Except that my mom wasn't big into the social end of things - my dad was very social and outgoing, had lots of friends, was often gone playing bridge (or, when we were very young, poker). He joined Toastmasters; invited folks over to play bridge; visited his brothers and father often (the women, of course, were never mentioned - only the youngest sister, who was more willing to fill her 'assigned' role of caretaker and male-ego-amplifier).

My role model was of a woman who seemed terrified that she'd be caught having no clue what to do, so she stayed endlessly busy at her household tasks. My sense of her (no real, clear memories, just impressions) was that she was terrified much of the time - that dad would abandon her, that she'd fail, in some way, to please him. The massive power imbalance between the two of them was more like parent and child than two equal partners. It was always something that stuck in my craw, something I could never accept or like about her (or my father, either, for treating her with what amounted to disrespect, even contempt.)

I often get the sense that many (most?) people take after one parent or the other, but not both - they may take after the one they relate to most (the intellectual, the artist, etc.) or they may take after the one who matches their gender. I seems like the other parent will have an influence, but to a much lesser degree (and of course this is 'anecdata', based on watching others and listening to their stories.)

I feel like I'm sort of caught right in the middle - like I can't choose either path, because I'm really, truly, half of each, and it's impossible to split myself in two like that. It often feels like the culture could accept me better if I'd conform to one or the other, to choose - to be the dreamy, artistic, idealistic, squishy, touchy-feely hippie type would make me weird but acceptably non-threatening to many men; the fact that I don't accept their 'I-know-everything-about-every-conceivable-subject-because-I'm-a-dude' rubs them the wrong way and sends them off in a huff every time.

But I'm not an academic type, either, though I'm a voracious reader and love to think about all kinds of things, and am fascinated by the science-y stuff - to a point. Then I lose interest, I could never be trapped in a stuffy lab staring at slides under a miscroscope all day, for example.

If it doesn't sound egotistical (and I'm afraid it does because women typically aren't allowed to apply these words to themselves), the words I'd like to use to describe myself are:

Philosopher
Musician
Psychic (in the intuitive sense more than the wacky, woo-woo new age sense)
Healer
Inventor (bigger on ideas than execution)
Explorer (especially of mental realms)
Synthesist
Idealist
Eccentric (will I wear purple when I get old?)

I also tend to be quite physical as well as spending lots of long, happy hours wandering around inside my head, turning over ideas; and at the same time an artist and dreamer. I sometimes feel that it's my failure to choose a category or pigeonhole to fit myself into that makes it so hard to find others to relate to. I find it works best if I do it piecemeal - an artist here, a musician friend there, another to go dancing with or see movies, yet another to discuss the nitty-gritty details of gardening that might bore a non-gardener to tears. And yet another friend to obsess over the details of our favorite old science fiction stories.

But it's hard, sometimes, to feel like I can't find someone who's just like me - both in our level of intensity and interest in all kinds of things, rather than being focused narrowly on job and maybe a few hobbies. I guess that's just the way it is, but it's always like cutting oneself up in pieces, dealing with fragments all the time instead of a whole self. Like, I have to hide away all the bits that are outside that person's particular intersection set (Venn diagram, maybe?) so that they don't just give me that puzzled, boy-are-you-weird look that I've encountered more times than I care to mention... sigh.

And it's not like I'm some kind of genius, either, so I don't fit in with the 'gifted' types - I'm often much more comfortable with a blue-collar tinkerer type who drinks beer and reads comic books than the highbrow, brie-eating set. Guess that might be 'cause, even though my parents 'graduated' to a middle class lifestyle during my growing up years, they're (were) basically blue-collar folks at heart, especially my mom. And my dad, even though he learned to dress the part more or less, still grew up poor. Though both his parents, my grandparents, were 'intellectuals', in that they loved to read and educate themselves. And like all (what's the word for self-educated intellectuals? I forget - autodidact? Not sure that's the word I'm looking for), their opinions were often extremely solid while having nothing whatsoever to do with anything mainstream. In other words, I grew up with an entire extended family (at least on my dad's side) of mavericks.

Which is great if you're a guy, but not so wonderful for a woman. Women are still expected to conform in ways that men aren't, especially with this current backlash that allows surface deviations like piercings, wacky hair color, tattoos, etc. - but the underlying mindset, men's attitude toward women, hasn't significantly changed. It's true that with the emo kids (as well as I understand all that), that some young men are more comfortable taking on stereotypically 'feminine' attributes - that and the whole metrosexual thing. But it still doesn't allow women much latitude to explore being forceful, aggressive and sure of themselves the way men are - we're still expected to defer. To have a woman called a 'go-getter' is a pretty sure sign that things haven't changed much, just turn the table and try a label on a guy to test its sexist-ness. How many guys have you ever heard called 'go-getters'? I'm betting the answer is, 'none'. Because guys are assumed to be go-getters, it's part of the definition of guy (and yes I realize that's a two-edged sword that doesn't bode well for any guy who's not a go-getter.)

Have wandered far afield as usual here, looping back to see where I started, and whether there's any obvious connection between there and here:

Ach. Starting new posts instead. Maybe loop back to this later.