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Aug. 12th, 2010 02:48 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sorcyressFoster is doing a month-long meme, where each day you get a question, and talk in depth about it. I've spent copious amounts of time on introducing myself, and far more than is reasonable in the first version of BehindtheWalls on what could logically be called "my first love", but todayyesterday's prompt, that of "parents" is a bit different.
My parents met at a sci-fi convention, at the first LARP on the east coast. This is one of my favourite facts about them, and I tell it to many people. The more detailed story involves a friend who mum was going to the con to hang out with --he from Canada and she from Maryland decided that Boston was close enough to the middle to be fair. And of course, Dad was local, Mom promptly started chasing him, caught his roommate, and for a short while, that was that.
After Walt cruelly dumped my mother on Valentines Day, Dad saw the opportunity and stepped in. This led to an engagement a year later, and a wedding not too much longer after that, if I have my facts straight. They've been married since June 1987, and happily, which gives me hope in the world. After the wedding they got kittens, and in late 1988, when neither of the kittens had been horribly killed, they figured they were ready to make a real baby. Thus, I enter the story.
I grew up primarily under the care of my mother --her only job for the past twenty years has been full-time mom to me and to Nik and Alys as they came along, and she does a fantastic job of it. She is well on her way to becoming a secret master of girl scouts, she volunteered at our elementary and middle schools, and there are still a handful of Long Reach alumni who refer to her as the drama mama. She has done a fine job of raising us, (though I may be biased), and should I ever have children of my own1, I have no doubt that she will be anything other than a wonderful grandmother.
From her, I get my long hair, (and indeed in all other ways my current appearance --it is amazing how many photos were floating around the Markland reunion of me in awful eighties-glasses) my mellowness, my extroversion (of the "I'm SHYYYYY" variety), my intense dislike of drama (and inability to cope with social tension), the fact that I am far too easily amused (very few movies are considered unenjoyable --especially as I get great joy out of utilizing my father's gift of snark for the truly awful ones), and my flirtatious nature --the two of us are a force to be reckoned with when we've got our sights on some pretty boy. I'm dreadfully lucky she's monoamorous, lest I lose a boyfriend or three.
My father was always the more absent figure of my childhood --intensified right now, as he is living alone in Chicago for the next year. He is driven and hard-working, one of them doctor types, and between odd hours and near constant business trips (every October since at least middle school, he has been in a different part of the world each weekend), he just wasn't around nearly as much as my mother.
He has always been good for games though. When I was ten or eleven, he started a roleplaying game for me and the siblings, using the tiled floor of our basement as a table, and raiding our toyboxes for monsters. This lasted for easily four years, playing every few months, and has formed many of my opinions on what a roleplaying game should be like. He is a fine DM, and I dearly miss the game some nights. He taught Nik and I how to play Magic as well --when I was in elementary school, we had a 60 card deck that both players drew from, a red green one where you always hoped to get the fireball. As we got older, he would take us to sealed deck tournaments, and later, let us into his magic league, making decks for me (Nik had flair enough to do it himself) based around my ideas.
From him, I get my snark, and a lot of my sense of humour. I get my impatience, especially for inefficiency, and my ability to weave through an airport without flying to pieces. My younger self looks like his little sister, and some of the dramatic girth of my hair is due to his own thick locks. He's responsible for my introverted moments, too, and my ability to be utterly fine by myself at a party --there are corners, I have books, we're fine. And he's part of why I'm familiar with the idea of comfortable silence --mom and I chat, about things both important and not, but dad and I can just exist around each other.
So yeah, that's my parents. I love them both, and wish them both well in the world.
~Sor
MOOP!
1: Brenton and I joke about this sometimes --our three, Theo and Hypo and Mel. (Short for Theoretical, Hypothetical, and Melisinde.)
My parents met at a sci-fi convention, at the first LARP on the east coast. This is one of my favourite facts about them, and I tell it to many people. The more detailed story involves a friend who mum was going to the con to hang out with --he from Canada and she from Maryland decided that Boston was close enough to the middle to be fair. And of course, Dad was local, Mom promptly started chasing him, caught his roommate, and for a short while, that was that.
After Walt cruelly dumped my mother on Valentines Day, Dad saw the opportunity and stepped in. This led to an engagement a year later, and a wedding not too much longer after that, if I have my facts straight. They've been married since June 1987, and happily, which gives me hope in the world. After the wedding they got kittens, and in late 1988, when neither of the kittens had been horribly killed, they figured they were ready to make a real baby. Thus, I enter the story.
I grew up primarily under the care of my mother --her only job for the past twenty years has been full-time mom to me and to Nik and Alys as they came along, and she does a fantastic job of it. She is well on her way to becoming a secret master of girl scouts, she volunteered at our elementary and middle schools, and there are still a handful of Long Reach alumni who refer to her as the drama mama. She has done a fine job of raising us, (though I may be biased), and should I ever have children of my own1, I have no doubt that she will be anything other than a wonderful grandmother.
From her, I get my long hair, (and indeed in all other ways my current appearance --it is amazing how many photos were floating around the Markland reunion of me in awful eighties-glasses) my mellowness, my extroversion (of the "I'm SHYYYYY" variety), my intense dislike of drama (and inability to cope with social tension), the fact that I am far too easily amused (very few movies are considered unenjoyable --especially as I get great joy out of utilizing my father's gift of snark for the truly awful ones), and my flirtatious nature --the two of us are a force to be reckoned with when we've got our sights on some pretty boy. I'm dreadfully lucky she's monoamorous, lest I lose a boyfriend or three.
My father was always the more absent figure of my childhood --intensified right now, as he is living alone in Chicago for the next year. He is driven and hard-working, one of them doctor types, and between odd hours and near constant business trips (every October since at least middle school, he has been in a different part of the world each weekend), he just wasn't around nearly as much as my mother.
He has always been good for games though. When I was ten or eleven, he started a roleplaying game for me and the siblings, using the tiled floor of our basement as a table, and raiding our toyboxes for monsters. This lasted for easily four years, playing every few months, and has formed many of my opinions on what a roleplaying game should be like. He is a fine DM, and I dearly miss the game some nights. He taught Nik and I how to play Magic as well --when I was in elementary school, we had a 60 card deck that both players drew from, a red green one where you always hoped to get the fireball. As we got older, he would take us to sealed deck tournaments, and later, let us into his magic league, making decks for me (Nik had flair enough to do it himself) based around my ideas.
From him, I get my snark, and a lot of my sense of humour. I get my impatience, especially for inefficiency, and my ability to weave through an airport without flying to pieces. My younger self looks like his little sister, and some of the dramatic girth of my hair is due to his own thick locks. He's responsible for my introverted moments, too, and my ability to be utterly fine by myself at a party --there are corners, I have books, we're fine. And he's part of why I'm familiar with the idea of comfortable silence --mom and I chat, about things both important and not, but dad and I can just exist around each other.
So yeah, that's my parents. I love them both, and wish them both well in the world.
~Sor
MOOP!
1: Brenton and I joke about this sometimes --our three, Theo and Hypo and Mel. (Short for Theoretical, Hypothetical, and Melisinde.)
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no subject
on 2010-08-12 09:06 pm (UTC)