When in 1958 we moved into "town"-- i.e., into a suburban neighborhood--
I saw nothing but differences between my family and the neighbors.
Both of my parents held jobs, which was bad enough, but my father
worked at night, when most of the world slept. (Which meant,
lucky for me, that he was there in the afternoon when I got home
from school.) My mother did not cook or sew, and when she tried
to do either of these things, we all suffered for it. My father
was a wonderful cook. Like clockwork, he had supper on the table
at five sharp, every night, when my mother was expected to pull
into the driveway, home after a hard day's work keeping a company's
books. The neighbors thought this "unnatural" arrangement was
terrible, but given my father's stocky, powerful build, his reserved
personality, his recent past as a truck driver and owner of an
Indian motorcycle, and his macho position as a factory foreman,
the neighbors' opprobrium could not impugn his "manhood." (My
mother, naturally, and her supposed lack of womanliness, was the
primary target of their outrage.) Hardly a suppertime went by
that my parents didn't preach the gospel of noncomformity. This
gospel didn't take with the brother who was eleven months my junior,
but it rooted itself in fertile ground in me-- to my parents'
later-- and openly rueful-- regret.