i grew up listening to men's voices;

the women in my life were largely silent.

Unlike the stereotypes of family gatherings where the women chatter like hens, flocking together to gather and sort and sift the details of family life, the women in my family seemed fragmented - nothing held them together, at all, except the fact that they'd married men who were brothers. They rarely seemed to have much to say to one another; my mom's few comments about my aunts seemed catty and resentful (which, these days, I might attribute to being trapped in patriarchal, emotionally oppressive marriages - it's all about competition for status within the constraints of the passive, wifely role).

I don't even know what my mother did at these large clan gatherings - in my mind, and in many photos, she is simply absent. Maybe I picked up my penchant, at least in later life, for lurking at the margins of rooms, evading the limelight, from her? Funny how these things don't become clear until a great deal of time has passed, until one is able to view things from some distance. Up close, the details blur, it all becomes part of what is; there's no ability to sort, categorize, attribute, make sense of things. One thing just happens after another, with seeming randomness. The pattern, if there is one, doesn't emerge until one can look from afar, as if viewing the scene of one's life from an airplane high above.

***
It strikes me that, after dad died, mom must have begun making up for lost time: she became an unending chatterbox, one of those oblivious yammerers who'd hold you in the death grip of painful, relentless detail about people you'd never met (and never would) and couldn't care less about; it was as if, by filling every speck of airspace solidly from edge to edge with the trivia of the lives of random strangers, no stray unwelcome thought about her own life could intrude. It felt (still feels) like a kind of static, the blank screen on the TV when there's no reception. I once, puzzling over this strange affliction with my younger brother, referred to it as 'Radio Mom'.

It was as if, no matter when you called or stopped by, no matter where you were or what you were doing, she'd immediately drop into whatever train of thought was uppermost on her mind - such as a minutely detailed and exhaustive (exhausting?) post-mortem of a visit to her favorite coffee shop, and exactly what the favored barista said, and what said barista was doing with her life, and how the barista's friend had told a story about yet another acquaintance...by this point I'm beating my head against the wall to keep from screaming "shut up!" at her in absolute frustration and mind-numbing boredom. "If I ever get like this?" I said to my brother, "shoot me. Just shoot me. Put me out of my misery."

***
These thoughts were triggered by reading Caroline Knapp's essays, realizing that never have I been inspired into a flood of self-expression by a woman author before.

Why is that, I wondered? And realized that I grew up reading books by men, about men; I think I identified with male characters more than female ones, and working out the above ideas about the silence of the actual women in my life reinforces this notion.

I've had to consciously seek out women writers, women filmmakers, women whose stories get told as loudly and unselfconsciously as mens'.

You know what? There aren't many. Women's stories, I mean. Women are largely eradicated from the history books; a token woman here and there - Joan of Arc, Madame Curie. Many, if not most of the women who are allowed to make it into the halls of fame have tragic stories, as if women are only truly likeable if we suffer, a lot. But silently, and with a smile on our faces, troubling no one with our woes. The most celebrated women are those who sacrifice themselves to the men in their lives - fathers, husbands, brothers, sons. Florence Nightingale; Queen Elizabeth; Mother Teresa. The ones who are canonized are those who serve, endlessly, unquestioningly, unstintingly. Those who rebel? are dead - Thelma and Louise is the first example that comes to mind.

Wandering, random, meandering thoughts aside (oh no - I'm turning into my mother! Aaaagggghhhh!!!) I think Knapp's writing inspires me because she's so unapologetic, and mostly seems not to be trying to be clever or to impress you with her wit and erudition. What she says is so plain, honest and open - not quite raw - more as if she's simply speaking to you, directly from her experience, hiding nothing, a seeker after truth. Maybe that's what resonates for me: This honesty, this willingness to hold nothing back if by doing so one is able to expose, to uncover, the truth. Such as it is and what there is of it.