A Novel Life

Me, not looking at my father holding the camera

As a child, I had two great mysteries to work out. One was my family, and the other was myself.

Family

My family was composed of four very private people. When we each inhabited our own worlds, doing what we liked to do, we got along well enough. The house was quiet and well-run by my mother: we had regular meals and new clothes in a clean and orderly environment. My mother and father found like-minded friends outside our home, leaving my brother and me to manage our own separate social lives.

During big events like holidays, where cultural expectations were heavy and precise, we struggled to fit the ideal of a typical American family—great quantities of food, merry visits with family and friends, and a mood of happy anticipation. We were not well equipped to meet these expectations, but my mother was valiant in her efforts to do right by our family. Togetherness did not come easily, though, so tension was high on these occasions.

Myself

At the same time, I was sorting out my own personhood. My body was non-standard; you could say I was mildly handicapped (to use that era’s terminology). I had non-matching knees and feet, making it hard to run, so children’s games were a challenge; I was always last to be chosen. I was very long-sighted, and staring into the distance was comfortable for my eyes; this gave me a far-away aspect that teachers did not appreciate. I believe I would now been classified as on the autism spectrum and exhibiting symptoms of ADD (attention deficit disorder, but not the excess energy type—that’s ADHD). Taken together, I must have seemed a dreamy, distant person who didn’t move quickly or join in kids’ group play.

National Honor Society, Durrett High School

I did well one-on-one, and always had friends who also liked quiet, artistic activities. I loved to sing and was usually in a choir. And my greatest love, always, was reading.

Because I read so much and had a good memory, any schoolwork involving books and analysis (a skill that I developed early on) was easy for me. I very much disliked school itself; it was too sedentary, too under-stimulating, and too rule-bound for my free-ranging mind. Even so, I usually made good grades and did well on tests, becoming a National Merit Scholar (a big deal in those days) in high school.

Novels

So how have I had a novel life? All that reading!!

As a child, I methodically read through every book in my school and church libraries. When I could get someone to take me, I swept through public libraries’ children’s sections.

 

Me on the left, again not looking at the camera

What I read were novels, mostly, written about children with sweet, cozy families. I was fascinated to visualize these people who joked with each other, played board games together, and had energetic pets like puppies. I made up stories in my head about imaginary families and taught myself how to be in a typical family. Of course, these were novels, not real life, so there was plenty of idealization, but nevertheless, I got the basics and began to imagine a more typical family life.

Novels gave me a template for socialization into American norms of the nuclear family (not nuclear bombs—rather, families gathered around a close nucleus of parents and children). The perfect (fictitious) families in novels helped me mold my own behavior.

Expanding Novel Life

Later in life, I became close to people who did not fit those norms at all. Their idea of family might be seven unrelated people living on a commune, an extended family with grandma and maiden aunts, a couple who never married but raised children together, blended families, one-person families, multi-racial families, LGBTQ+ families, and more.

 

AI-generated photo of a commune (not anyone I know!)

So life has expanded beyond those novels I read. What has not changed, though, is my interest in all the ways that people live, separately and together. I still love a good story, and I do read novels, though I find that creative non-fiction (lightly fictionalized accounts of real events), documentaries, and well-researched histories also offer valuable insights into the patterns that cultures provide for living as social animals.

Thank goodness for novels! Without them, I would probably be much less “well-adjusted” than I am, and I would certainly be less empathetic to how other people live. My novel life has been a blessing and a joy, even if I never found that elusive “perfect family life.”