The Matriarchy

"My family's a matriarchy," the cute boy told me across the Silliman College dining hall table. "The women absolutely run the show." As Elliot would later describe the dinner, I might have well have asked, "Please describe the character of your extended family in twenty words or less." I thought I had asked him out on our first date. He felt like I had invited him to audition for the role of Potential Boyfriend with an informational interview.

(I stand by my claim that the Silliman dinner was our first date. He points to our evening a week later, when he asked me to a show at the Yale Repertory Theater. Apparently I didn't grill him that night.)

For thirteen years now, I have observed the truth of my future husband's observation: despite being one of four boys with only one sister, Elliot's family is indeed a matriarchy. His grandmother, his mother, his aunts and his sister have unusual strength of character that is consistent across the generations. Now that I'm living in the bosom of the matriarchy, my observation has morphed into greater participation, and I've felt increasingly blessed to have been invited in. On Sunday, when Elliot and I spoke in our ward's Sacrament Meeting, I looked down to the first two rows of pews: my mother and stepfather were joined by my mother-in-law, my father-in-law, my brother-in-law and my aunt-in-law, flanked with the newest generation of powerhouse ladies, my three girls. "I am part of a large, supportive Mormon family," I thought. Is this what I had imagined when the boy told me about the matriarchy so many years ago? It certainly had been a hope.

Monday afternoon I lay very still in my bed, plastic shields taped against my delicate, recovering eyes. I had just had LASIK surgery that morning. My plans for childcare after school had fallen through, and Elliot was left to manage the post-school stretch all by himself. Until he thought of his sister. Within an hour of his desperate call, his sister arrived at my door, complete with brownies and harvested treasures from her yard she thought my girls might enjoy studying. As I lay undisturbed in my bed, listening to my sister-in-law expertly save my husband from an afternoon of doom, I drifted off to sleep. I dreamed. I saw the inside of a house, green and happy, where my children laughed with their aunt. A bluegrass band appeared, like the one we used to stop and listen to at the edge of Prospect Park every Saturday morning in Brooklyn, and my girls danced to the fiddle around the green and happy living room, twirling under their aunt's raised arms and clapping at the joyous sounds. I observed the scene with satisfaction, feeling grateful my girls were loved in my absence.

When I woke, the bluegrass band was gone, but the feeling was true.

Comments

[Leisl Simmons]

Thank you Neylan, I love you.