All in the Family

I read Hemingway all day yesterday. And by seven, when I turned the last page of The Sun Also Rises, all I wanted to do was get drunk. Good and Hemingway drunk. Only the drink du jour here is chilled white wine, which is a little more lightweight than I had in mind.

Still, I gave it the old college try and by ten o’clock, I was drunk indeed. And antisocial and asleep. How Hemingway of me.

At this beach house, there is a family. It is Boyfriend’s family and it is huge. A giant, sprawling Irish Catholic family, which everybody’s heard of, but until you’ve experienced it, it’s all just theory. The matriarch, Kae, came from ten or twelve siblings and birthed twelve of her own. There are something like 64 first cousins in that generation.

A gathering of this family is so unlike my teeny-tiny family of five that I frequently feel as though an entire Japanese bus tour has descended right on top of me.

It gets a little overwhelming.

Because it’s not like everyone just sits politely, repressing their feelings and staring at their drinks. They're all extroverted beyond extroversion. I suppose you’d have to be with eleven brothers and sisters. How could you possibly get a moment alone? Would you even have the option of being an introvert? Would you know what it means?

All this extroversion brings out the hermit in me. Or maybe it’s the lake, or the 34-degree heat. Or the fact that I can’t go swimming yet because of my surgery and how do you explain to a eight-year-old that someone lopped a chunk off your cervix rather recently and that’s why you can’t go into the lake? Especially when the eight-year-old won’t know what a cervix is and I’m certainly not going to be the one to open that can of worms.

The solution I’ve gone with is “tummy.” Only that’s imperfect too because wouldn’t I have a scar or something on my tummy if the surgery was on my tummy? Perhaps I should have gone with “bum.” And did I mention that I got my period the day we left for this 30-degree lakeside paradise and I’ve had to reconcile giant diaper-like maxi pads with short shorts and butt sweat for the last three days? Interestingly, I’ve discovered that a thong offers unexpected stability in that department. All you have to do is cram it...never mind.

You can see why all I want to do is sit and read.

I get like this sometimes. Perhaps I have a low tolerance level for humans. I OD on them quickly and then need solitude rehab. And I’ve also learned I am a 90-pound-weakling when it comes to children. Surrounded by this many kids for this many days makes my on-and-off biological clock rock back and forth, cry in the corner and shriek for its medication.

This is another thing when you come from a giant family. You become excellent with children because there are always a hundred of them around. Boyfriend, for example, is spectacular with the little ones. He plays with them all day long, displaying a level of stamina that makes my traumatized clock stop writhing and at least sit up and eat a little soup.