Nature and Nurture

Fuckpolitness's lovely comment there (yay!) set me one wondering : how does one become who we are?
How did I apparently turn out different from a lot of the girls I know?
How come I don't want to run to anyone for help?

I'd think it's all in the luck of the draw (that would be the nature issue) but it's probably much more likely to be the environment you've had to live in.

I've had an extremely privileged life.

I come from a multicultural family, to start off with. I do believe that helps with openness, because there are always a lot of issues to resolve within yourself, so you can't just take things for granted.
My French classmates know where they're from, who they are, where they'll go (well, usually). I never have. I'm not French, not British, not American, definitely not Swedish, so I've always wondered where I stood.

My family isn't particularly conventional or unconventional.
My father is American by choice, swedish american by inheritance, born and raised in France.
He left for America for university at eighteen, at which point my swedish grandmother and alcoholic artist american grandfather divorced. That would be in the early seventies, when it definitely wasn't fashionable in France.
My grandmother moved down South and never remarried. One of her exes is a good family friend. She set up her business, made her own life. A good example. Now she's a tough old lady whom I suspect of waiting for my marriage eagerly because my parents pulled a fast one and got married in the Caribbean, with me as an attendee, when I was one.
My grandfather moved down here to live with us last year. I never got on with him much, now he's losing it,probably because of the alcohol abuse, so I do my best to be nice. But he's a stubborn old dude,(like the rest of the family) and when he still had it I suspected him of looking down on me because I was a girl. Most people preferred my younger brother when i was a kid, because he was outgoing and charming, when I was shy and always had my nose stuck in a book-but I suspected ulterior motives^^
In the meantime, my dad lived all over the place-Kentucky, LA for a few years when he had to give up uni because they cut his job as a French teaching assistant(he tells us great stories about that time), he was a truckdriver in France and Europe, then one day finally got an office job in England, met my mother, and bam! A couple of years later I turned up :)
My mother once said she was surprised my father had turned out so normal.
My mother was very English. A horsey girl, one of the eighties working girls. When we all moved here she took a part-time job as an accountant, and on the side she organises european exchanges, is boss of an association that half-runs the local music school, finds time to play music in the meantime and work the horse. My mother is a nut. She never quite grew up, which is why all my friends love her.
So no-one ever told me women couldn't do it.
I had a very conflictual relationship with my dad for a long time. We're very similar. But he had hepatitis for most of my life-he's been cured for a few years now-and the treatment was very heavy, and changed him a lot. He was constantly on a short fuse. But I was teenaged and merciless, and far too preoccupied with myself to care about such futile things^^.
To be fair, he likes to have his own way, like the rest of us, and has as quick a temper as mine. The shouting matches in our house were epic^^I feel sorry for my mother now, because she had to bear the brunt of both our tempers. She doesn't get angry-much. In a household where tempers are famously quick, I'd say she's at a disadvantage. Except that when she's really mad, we all run for cover.
There's another point; my father and I are just as bad, so why couldn't we be just as good?
I'd love to have his ease of speech, his immediate friendliness. I still remember when we celebrated his fiftieth, the year before I started high school. There were sooo many people.
My mother knows absolutely everyone. I'd often meet people of all ages, and they'd know my mother. I still do. I ran into a friend at a concert a couple weeks ago, he invited me to the concert his band is particpating in in a few weeks, turns out my mother's organising it.

One of her best friends makes me laugh a lot. She's a fifty-odd lesbian with a fantastic sense of humour. I know this doesn't seem to have much to do with my family, but I know I grew up hearing my mother talking about the friends back in England, the gay friends who had just bought a house together, my dad's best friend was married to a black woman and their daughter is his goddaughter-I see a lot about white people talking about their black friend, or their gay friend, on the internet, and it's seen as posing. But I grew up like this, and none of it seemed strange. When I think of it, yeah I have black friends and gay friends and asian friends and whatnot. But I have to stop and think about it because their "difference" isn't what is going to come to my mind first. Take one of my black mates-the first thing I'd tell anyone about him is that's he really cute, he's fun, he's in his third year of history. Oh yeah, he's black. So what?

Damn, I'm late, and supposed to be meeting someone for coffee. More later.

well, Cousin S got here yesterday. (I'll try and remember to call her Cousin S and not get confused).
At first, she seemed like the in colour, female version of the mime Marceau (=mute). I'll put that down to jetlag.
Anyhoo, she opened up a bit today, thank god. And she seems really nice now.
So it's all good.

["In these matters the only certainty is that nothing is certain." P.T.E.]

Uninvaded

The three Swedes left today.
Now, I very much enjoyed having them here, and Marcus is very cute and very nice, so that's even more enjoyable, but really, BOYS!
Stick a group of them in a strange house with one girl their age and a teenage boy....girl ends up having to babysit EVERYONE.
So as much as I liked having them around, I'm glad my housekeeping duties are over. Especially as my parents came back today, turning up at the same time as my best friend, which made for a bit of a mess in the yard.
And on Thursday, the American cousin is arriving. I think I might run away. I mean, I've been a tour guide before, but that has always been by choice, and not because I felt like I had to. And it's always been in groups with plenty of guys-the last time that happened, I helped out some friends of my mother's who had a Scottish rugby team coming over and no-one to take care of them. So I did. And it was great fun. But I tend to get on well with big groups of guys. Mainly because when the ribbing gets really too much, I'll have a good rant, and forget about it ten minutes later.
Ah, the Scots. Great ones for drinking, they were. I hadn't seen anyone drink that much since Id been to the Czech Republic.

["Laziness is nothing more than the habit of resting before you get tired." J.R.]

unexpectedness

busy watching Wile E. Coyote trying to catch Bugs Bunny, which is against the natural order of things. Although I do wish he'd catch Bip Bip the roadrunner one day. That bird is very annoying.
Anyway, I digress.
I was woken up this morning by a phone call fro my Dad, off holidaying in the Pyrenees, while I babysit a house, a brother, and more I don't care to talk about. He had just had a call from my Aunt Lena (one of the swedes) saying my cousin Oscar and two friends of his were arriving in Avignon today and coming to stay with us. So I've been running all over the place clearing up, getting beds ready, the usual, but it's good news, should be entertaining.

Last time I saw Oscar it was Christmas 2006 in Stockholm and I have vivid memories of watching him tie massive fireworks to a stop sign-the fireworks went off with a BANG! and were very pretty, and a neighbour threatened to call the police.


["Never explain--your friends do not need it and your enemies will not believe you anyway."E.H.}

Note to self

...it's only when I start moaning that i get what I want :D
yes, my university results came today, two weeks after most students' (not sure of the punctuation there) and all is good, just another year to survive.

On another note, I have been finding out a few things about one of my US cousin who is coming to spend a month here in August. These things worry me.
To put things into context, my Dad is swedish-american, and his parents lived in Paris all his life, well until he was eighteen and went off to university in the States, on which occasion my grandmother(who is the swedish half) applied for divorce and moved down to the sunny south of France, where I am currently located.
Anyway. I can't quite remember when my dad moved back to France, but it was quite a few years later, and then he went to England sometime during the eighties, met my mother, end of story. Until they moved to France in the nineties with my brother and I in tow.
I've only ever been to the US once, when I was fifteen, and met part of the family there (my Dad had eight uncles and aunts.large family).
Well, I was fifteen.
I hated it.
I'm not that comfortable with big family gatherings, because it's not something that's been part of my life, living overseas from just about all the relatives.
Even so, I was bored. The cousins nearest to me in age, between 18 and 25, well they just didn't have much conversation, to be honest. I went with one of them to see a documentary and she came out of the cinema wondering what the hell it was about.
I've always been fairly easily bored, but the two weeks I spent there were mind-numbing. I was sick of the food, of the TV, of the gigantism of everything.
I might be American by blood, but I'm sure not part of that culture.
Although I'd give it another shot. But somewhere alive. I'd love to see San Francisco one day.
But anyway. I digress.
So. My cousin is six months older than I am. Fair enough. Saw a picture of her earlier-she looks between 5 and 10 years older than I do. Dad said "oh, it's the make-up". Um.
And she's getting married. Apparently her fiancé proposed a few days ago.
Looking forward to the conversation.
I'm taking bets with myself on her being religious, which is going to be extremely uncomfortable in a house of atheists. I'm not even baptized, neither is my brother. I don't even have any religious friends. The closest I have to that is my flatmate's boyfriend, and we've never talked about it.
hm. Starting to have doubts about this plan.