According to Bartlebys , the phrase 'familiarity breeds contempt’ means: “The better we know people, the more likely we are to find fault with them.” It seems the quote originally came from Mark Twain. “Familiarity breeds contempt. How accurate that is. The reason we hold truth in such respect is because we have so little opportunity to get familiar with it.” (I love Mark Twain!)
So, why am I writing on this subject? Well, pull up a chair and I will elaborate. I got an email from my sister last week. Dee wanted to know when a certain art exhibit was going to be in my town and how hard it would be to get in and see it. She makes 6 figures and flying halfway across country is not an expensive proposition for her. She is not a rich snob, but when she wants something she goes for it. But there was also something else in her email. She currently has my middle brother and his wife as ‘guests’ at her house and she said she was going crazy and she wanted to warn me about planning for their visit out my way. Was she getting a little too familiar? Getting a little contempt thing going?
Here is the back story about my siblings. About a decade ago my middle brother, whom we shall call Lem, was unmarried and in his 40’s. Lem and my sister were the best of camping and hiking buddies at that time. Dee was married but her husband was on travel 80% of the time. These two siblings of mine worked together on house repair projects, went on skiing trips and camping adventures and prepared massive feasts with original recipes for all the local relatives. It seemed to me that they spent most weekends together.
At 51 Lem married, for the first time in his life, a lovely woman who had been married once before. This gal whom we will call Annie originally came over from Europe as a teenager and was a teacher at my brother's school. She is very outgoing, high energy, and tends to ‘get involved’ in your activities. She is a ‘do-gooder’ liberal who is now retired and she is the one who organized the recent 4-month volunteer adventure with my brother in Madagascar that I mentioned in a prior blog. As part of this travel adventure, they had rented out their house in Colorado for 12 months. While they have many travels and activities planned for the next 6 months, they have to stay with my sister and also my other youngest brother for at least 3.5 of the weeks this winter (along with crashing at other homes). They are hoping to also come out and visit us during their house rental hiatus in the Spring (should I be concerned?). I welcomed them with open arms, even though we will be between a tiny apartment and a newly finished house.
According to Dee’s recent email, she is ready to kill them (note she is not planning on killing herself). Dee is a strong but normal liberal--whatever in hell that is--I guess I just want you to know she isn't into wife-swapping or Bible burning. She pretty much has her big house to herself and except for the demands of her job, she doesn’t find a need to make many compromises in her life. She has no biological children making demands on her time. She is a nice person.
Much to the total surprise of my whole Democratic family, my brother Lem morphed into a conservative somewhere along the way. He is a strange conservative. He is not religious, non-militaristic, living off of a teacher’s retirement salary. I guess this bothers all of us because we wonder how in late life he married to a do-gooder liberal. He writes a conservative blog, not read by anyone, but it gets him access to the state Capital. My brother-in-law says that Lem really hasn't thought this stuff through because he is a contradiction.
I guess I wonder if the real problem lies with the fact that my brother, who used to be my sister’s best friend, is now a married person; or if it is the fact that he is a conservative; or is it the fact that Annie keeps getting involved in everyone’s business; or is it just that familiarity does breed contempt? You can have your relatives for guests for short periods of time and as Ben Franklin said, “Guests, like fish, begin to smell after three days.”
I get along with everybody in my family (she types smugly)…but then I live thousands of miles away! Maybe that is the secret to good family relations among siblings. How long should I let them stay?
All I can say is (for fear of being Googled by certain people) that I totally agree with you. I'm very much set in my ways, distracted by 3 kids and a husband, and therefore I really don't like chaos in my life. Some people say that maybe I'm just really uptight, but I'm a bear when I don't get enough sleep or when people throw tangents in my day, like every day. But I do think tangents can be fun, or a breath of fresh air. It's just nice getting back to the normal swing of things though.
ReplyDeleteAnd your brother does sound like he's a contradiction, hehe. I do think that getting married has definitely changed him, because that's what happened to me.
My first thoughts were possibly Dee is jealous of Lem's marriage, since it took her buddy away.
ReplyDeleteSecond for Dee, is by not having children of her own, perhaps she didn't learn to share her life or her time with others?
Next, my thoughts are maybe Annie is too controlling and by being conservative it is Lem's way of keeping some identity for himself.
And as for family visiting, I tend to give too much of myself until I become bitter. I had to learn (am still learning) my boundaries with others. If you are the type of person who can say "Stop. Enough. I need time for me", then you will probably be okay with your brother and his wife visiting.
As for time, the do-gooder would do me in. Just off the top of my head I would throw in "three weeks."
Without knowing your family, just an outsider reading what you wrote as if I were reading the beginning of a book, that is what I would guess about the characters you described.
Wasn't it Benjamin Franklin who said fish and visitors smell after three days?
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