That explains everything.

Once, several years ago, when I was just starting out my writing career, I was asked to write my own contributor’s note for an anthology I was part of. I wrote: “I am the only daughter in a family of six sons. That explains everything.”

Those are the opening sentences of Sandra Cisneros' Only Daughter, a piece we read yesterday in class.  She goes on to highlight the dynamics of her childhood Mexican-American household, where she was loved and cherished but not a son.  She was the only daughter, and only a daughter.  Today we did a simple follow-up worksheet that, hopefully, required more thinking than remembering, if you know what I mean.

Question number seven asked what one, or two, sentences, "explain everything."  Here are a few responses I read.

I am the social hermit in an outgoing family.  That explains everything.  

I am an only child and I’m adopted.  That explains everything.  

Honestly, I’m trying to figure this out.  God has a plan.  Everything will pan out.  That explains everything.  

I am a middle child in a broken and pieced together home.  That explains everything.  

I am the eldest child in a broken family.  That explains everything.  

I am not like everyone else; I see and feel and think things differently.  This is the answer to everything.  I have always felt like I wasn't like everyone else.  That explains everything.  

I am the youngest in a family of three.  The youngest’s opinion isn't always taken into account.  That explains everything.  

I am the second child of four, but talent went to the other three.  That explains everything.  

I am the second oldest son, underneath a drug addict brother.  I have to be who he wasn't.  That explains everything.  

I am one Smith amongst two Johnson daughters, because I don’t live with either of my biological parents.  That explains everything.  

I am who I am because of me.  My mom and dad thought drugs were more important than me.  My sisters soon followed suit.  But I couldn’t.  That explains everything.

Geersh I love my babies.  Even if I'm stress eating because of them.  I simultaneously hate and appreciate the pain they are going through--the pain they share with me, and all the everything-and-so-much they hide.  I hate it because there's a part of me that thinks they don't deserve it.  I appreciate it because I know there is an element of hardness that is essential to navigating adulthood, and hardness comes via experience.  I hate it because I am scared of just how hard they might become.  I appreciate it because I know they will be able to love others through the same struggles.  And so closes a Tuesday.  Caught somewhere between beauty and pain and exhaustion and the deep-down feeling that this job still matters.

Also, for once, I hope that the papers I picked up, incomplete off the floor, were tossed there due to laziness, rather than avoidance.

xoxo Bec