Multigenerational Sisterhoods Are A Lifeline
Reporting to you live from my sister’s baby shower
There are three regulars in my jazz class at Alvin Ailey, all somewhere above 60 years old (and rocking it). I’m hoping to join their ranks.
Ever the teacher’s pet, my first aim has been to win over my instructor Jeffrey. He’s a long-legged diva who shares my love of Chaka Khan and calls out to the class things like “Welcome back dancer!” when he can tell someone with technique is rusty. I find it charming, as if I’m poised like a pre-pubescent Swan Lake hopeful. He’s glamour with a bite — which I adore and aspire to — and our fearless dynamo women are no different. In between going across the floor in threes or run-throughs of choreography, I try to sidle up next to them to confirm my technique or blow some steam over more complicated moves.
Their flared pants and movements are convincing as such that I imagine them coming to this studio forty odd years prior. They probably kick as high as they used to, without needing to maintain the pace they may have before. I know they are the first I should look to when I suspect Jeffrey switched the footing by accident. Oftentimes, it’s an unequivocal fact that we murmur back and forth: they’re not afraid to stop him and talk it out to contest his adjustments or possible forgetfulness. It’s something I’ve always admired in the women in my family, and 600 miles away I can have a piece of that familiarity breathe (pant) alongside me on Tuesday evenings.
Every time I go home I’m just like my sister’s hound dog, searching for specific spots in every room to make note of either what’s familiar or experienced updates since I was last there. My mom calls me into her craft room to run through a few things in preparation for my sister’s baby shower the following day, which leads into our favorite trap: digging through every project she’s working on across her two sewing tables and countless scrapbook shelves, comparing baby pictures of my siblings and I, and taking the $2 sticker off the bottom of a new yard sale tchotchke. We laugh to the brink of tears, wheezing at the goofy sayings we could draw on baby onesies that could piss my sister off, just enough for us to dine out on for a moment before the two of them gang back up on me.
Breakfast dates with my Grandma alternate locale around town, but two steps into any given door and we will run into friends, many who watched me grow up as the third generation (at least) in town. I give cautious double takes to white-haired folks in case they’ve ever been in the stands for mine or even my dad’s basketball games. When we don’t know them, it’s easy to find out; my grandma and her best friend Karen hold the key to essentially every person’s story. She skillfully doles out a wisecrack or kind remark from her arsenal to each passerby without appearing to feign interest in the least.
You certainly don’t need to call your grandmas or mothers your best friends to have fulfilling, loving relationships with them. Somehow, that’s exactly what has unfolded in my adult life. It probably helps that I view them as leaders in their own right, and wayfinders for my life — embodying a concoction of reverence, wit and self awareness.
I owe a great deal of who I am to my multigenerational relationships. It’s why I keep Moonstruck so close to my chest. You need commotion and exasperation, someone poking their words into your ribs in jest every now and then as a reminder you’re not so high and mighty… and then you need to dish it right back to settle the score. Living in a city apart from family members, there’s a chance you forget how comforting it is to run parallel to the lives of people outside your generation. It’s a natural symbiosis if you’re lucky enough to have it.
I was too young as a child to keep up with most of my female first and second cousins, so many of my fond memories of them were as a wallflower. Quiet as a mouse — an unhelpful simile for my narrow nose and wide ears — I studied the real-life versions of the millennial teenagers immortalized in TV and film in close proximity at family gatherings. I wanted to listen to their CDs, figure out how to message boys on AIM, take mirror selfies with a digital camera, be unbothered by my witty and boisterous uncles and older male cousins — or even equally witty and boisterous — instead of intimidated and on the back foot. The women in my family were (are) so fucking cool. I wear my family names like a badge of honor because it’s proof that there’s some semblance of what I love about them in my bones too.
Sisterhood is another sacred step up in the hierarchy of needs. Sometimes, that stems from your bloodline. In Steel Magnolias, it originates from the neighborhood and the seat of a salon chair. While the film is primarily centered around Sally Field and Julia Roberts’ relationship, these women experience challenges in their life and band together to support each other in overcoming them. No one has the same problem due to their age, experiences, or financial standing, but then again somehow they do: finding love, acceptance, stability, and happiness, among others. A gripping scene brings me to tears, chin trembling, yet ends with the sudden shock of laughter — entirely suitable in a group of friends that experience a variety of suffering, but can rely on an undercurrent of steadfast love.
Having had careers teaching at the beauty school, my grandma and great aunt resembled Dolly Parton’s role in the film. A spectrum of personalities, ages and identities walked through their salon doors, but they hardly lifted an eyebrow to it; instead creating a safe haven for people who were likely suffering elsewhere. All they needed was a good sense of humor and a fresh pair of scissors to be welcome. Hairdressers all across the city see my last name and hope I’m a descendant of those sisters — the ones they wanted approval from just as much as to have a smoke and talk shit with between clients — and the pride is almost as sweet as the security knowing they’ll feel guilty if I don’t like my haircut.
Every summer growing up, we would join the families of my dad’s high school gang in cabins and campsites around northern Michigan. The camaraderie I have with these parents is likely why I was the only kid growing up who called friends’ parents by their first names, or even personal nicknames. My own parents went by Mr. and Mrs. Stutz to my friends for our entire childhood, yet if I weren’t on a first name basis with an adult it was because they had authority or (in my mind) I hadn’t yet won them over. I remember one summer being freshly twenty-one, after a long day of swimming in the lake and imbibing nondescript craft beers and seltzers from koozies, one of the moms grabbed me by the shoulder saying “We loved you guys as kids, but we’ve been waiting for the moment when we get to drink with you!” I can’t help but think I have good parents because they keep good company. With this group, I feel seen for who I was and known for who I am, and they have full faith in every move I’ve made in my life. They raised me, and make me laugh & love harder still.
It’s the same sentiment with my godmother, who played the same role in my parent’s lives during college that I had with my friend and her now husband. My mom jokes that she would be exactly like her if she had never had my siblings and I; hearing this at the age when she was pregnant with me, I can understand some of the sacrifice and sweetness each encountered with the paths they’ve walked. When I visit my college roommate at her house, with her husband, with their baby (and dog!), I feel joy and distance and immense responsibility. I try to think of how special and adored I felt by someone who was on my parent’s ‘team’, and wonder how I can translate that investment into a few FaceTimes and dinners every couple of months with a sub-twenty pound toddler, who wears headbands with large bows and can only recently be deemed as having a head of hair.
As nuclear family propaganda rages on, I am reminded at checkpoints along the way how necessary the structure of sisterhood is, and a multigenerational/extrafamilial one at that. It’s a healer that has experienced centuries of de facto and de jure attacks (because a group of women on the same page must be soooo terrifying) — broken down, torn apart, and then lied to about who did it and why. Strengthening these ties is our path to resistance, to endurance. With the amount of times my friends and I ask ourselves if what we’re going through is due to our age, it’s a no-brainer that we should be expanding outside the twenty-something bubble and bring ourselves deeper into the community. The needs of NYers and Midwest suburbanites are no different in that respect.
Towards the end of the baby shower, my cousin sneaks over to me with the book she purchased for my sister and her husband. “Did Grandpa ever read you the book with the flying frogs?” she asks. I had some of the images flashing in my mind with no concrete connection to the story; just hundreds of frogs shooting across the night underneath a yellow moon. While many of his bedtime stories growing up had deeper philosophical or literature aims, Tuesday was a book without a plot, and Grandpa created a new storyline every night. Marion revealed that one night after asking him to read it again, he quipped that she “has to make up her own story” because he was too tired to be up to the task. We shared a big laugh, and a soft sigh that always comes around with rehashing our memories of him. Reading her note to my niece or nephew to be, I could see the equal parts of magic and practicality she holds, just like our witty Grandpa. I think we’re finally ready for the next phase.
I don’t know the names of the regulars in my jazz class — one of them is called Sue but I can’t pinpoint which — but I like to think of them as another Jen, or Kim, or Richelle, or Dolly Parton or Olympia Dukakis that I practice pas de bourrées with on Tuesday nights. Maybe I’ll have a moment tomorrow to ask.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ryann Stutz is a Brooklyn-based part time writer and full time optimist looking to interrogate the existing world order via fashion, politics, and culture. She’s an OG Michigander who also has a hard time not mentioning her memorable stint in London. Loves disco funk, the Waitrose DISH podcast, and Simon Jacquemus.