Three Cheers for Badass Protective Queen Bee Aliens with Acid for Blood
You know who you are!
Credit: BobsBurgers, Fox
No, this isn’t the title of a bad Sci-Fi movie. It happens to be the perfect descriptor for the women in my family. When I saw this gif in the morning coffee chat that we ladies have, I knew it was perfect because for decades I’ve had an occasional issue - I wake up out-of-sorts and mean as hell and I say, “I woke up with acid for blood.” Fortunately, as I’ve aged I’ve quickly recognized it and now take a mental health day when it happens.
My family was five girls and one boy, born in the wild 60’s when dad was 17 and mom 15 years old. We were no Partridge family touring the country in a bus and singing our way through life - although us girls - dressed up in matching leisure suits - were expected to sing in front of the family reunion crowds. “I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing” comes to mind.
More often than not, all of us bunked with our grandparents and our aunt who was paralyzed after a childhood brush with polio, because we were kicked out of yet another place for failure to pay rent. Let’s not get into the gory details. You know the story, boy meets girl, Disney characters start singing in the background, marriage, love and butterflies - blah, blah, blah - the American dream.
We toughened up real fast, especially after our mom died in the mid-70’s. This began our raising each other.
We were expected to compete with (like) boys. Two of my sisters played on the little league teams my dad coached. We all competed in sports, were decorated in our chosen athletics, and fell in line like good soldiers under the threat of corporal punishment. No groundings until we became teenagers. For anyone else growing up in the 70’s-80’s, you know that just like the depression-era parents of our parents, leadership was a tightly controlled peace-keeping mission, which relied on fear and intimidation.
The result was a ‘gang’ of 6 kids who were NOT easily intimidated by life. Hard as nails, we walked the talk. Most likely this was because dad’s motto was ‘don’t look for a fight, but if you or anyone else starts something, you’d better finish it, otherwise there’s more where that came from when you get home'.
When anyone messed with one cub, they got the whole pride. Once when I dated someone our neighbor wanted back (is one scary date really ‘dating’?), she threatened to beat me up. Uh, this guy she wanted to knock me around for was a brute. I had no interest in him. I didn’t even know she was threatening to beat me up, but my younger sister got wind of it and knocked her into next week after school. Another time, a girl 3 years older than me was talking shit about my youngest sister on the bus and I smashed her one. Clearly no one can talk shit about my youngest sister except me. Lol.
The point is we took on the world, all of us, like boys. Whatever work was done, we all did it - no such thing as boy’s work or girl’s work. From this beginning we each were indeed destined to become “badass protective queen bee aliens with acid for blood”. We had no preconceived notions of what femininity was, and no one seemed to have a problem with that. All the young men in our lives had an equal chance to be grilled by my father, while he held a gun in his lap, and to look in his eyes when he said, “curfew is midnight, no exceptions.”
We often say our kids have “2 dads” with us much less lovey-dovey than the average “Leave it to Beaver” mom. We’re more “quit crying, or I’ll give you something to cry about”. Even my brother (the youngest) ran off to the Army when he graduated high school. He felt right at home in a fraternal environment having been raised by 5 ‘sisters’, continuing the rigorous ‘bossing around’ to which he’d become accustomed.
When we had kids of our own, it was instantly apparent that if one person messed with our kids, there’d be hell to pay. I mean taking on bullies, taking on schoolteachers and administrators, fighting dragons, killing giants, etc. Basically, saving the world blindfolded with both hands tied behind our backs (down Neanderthals!). Seriously, though, when it comes to ‘making it’ and to making sure our kids ‘make it’, we - -
TAKE NO PRISONERS
Truly, as all parents knows, the absolute hardest thing in the world is to be UNABLE to pave the way, to help, to save our children. It’s their path to walk, not ours. It’s their mistake(s) to make, not ours. It’s their life to make or destroy, not ours. There’s nothing harder for the human eye to see and brain to comprehend than the train wreck ahead when one of our offspring veers off the path. All humans, even our children, get their 40 years in the desert.
And careers - “dial it back”, “let everyone get on board before your bullet train leaves the station”, “be motherly, like your (female) coworkers”, “you have ‘sharp elbows’”, “you’re hurting your coworkers’ feelings”, etc. We’ve heard it all, generally before we start taking a workplace apart and putting it back together better than before. We aren’t happy idling. We have a natural tendency to make things more efficient or better looking, or comfier, or whatever-er. Kind of like a force of nature.
There was a time when I, when we, were not happy with these traits. When we wanted to be more like “normal women”. We know better now. With age and hindsight and the ‘new world order’ trends in the modern global view, we understand we’re made for more. We’re made for harder. We’re stronger and more outwardly aware than most. There’s nothing important fucking getting past us and the men we chose, and who chose us, want us fighting next to them. Not today, but someday - some day - our children will look back and thank us for being ‘Badass Protective Queen Bee Aliens with Acid for Blood’ because there is NO ONE on this planet or any other who was “just right” for our little bears except us!
Before I go, I wanted to say I planned to add our kids’ perspectives to this story, but the post started writing itself in my head before I could get to our dozens of offspring to get their input. So, I will write a follow up with their perspectives another time.
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Bren, well-written and straightforward stuff! My family was the opposite, I was the youngest of three kids, only girl and I came through late...Mom was three months into her 39th year when I was born. I was smaller than everyone else and almost always the smallest one in class.
That is one of the fascinating things about family, we are all different and that is the journey we all have to travel, love it or not. Visceral, blunt, gnarly, grimy and yet the tribe we grew up in means something to us, flaws and all. Thank you for sharing this adventure...and cheers to Sigourney Weaver battling the Alien with acid for blood...not a forgettable woman. I sometimes feel like her...but...I'm not.
As a “blood for acid” niece (and while irrelevant, I’ll also include- an avid Bob’s Burgers fan) this describes our roots in such an amazing light. So much “mom-sense” as Linda would say.