WE LCO ME TO MIDDLEHOOD BY JUDI KETTELER
Sick of the Complaints
PARDON ME WHILE I COMPLAIN ABOUT MY FAMILY’S COMPLAINERS. BE THANKFUL YOU’RE NOT US. IF YOU HAVE CHILDREN, YOU START TO KNOW WHAT KIND OF FAMILY YOU ARE BY THE TIME your kids reach a certain age. There’s the Outdoor Family, where everyone hikes with backpacks and water bottles, happily posing for pictures at waterfalls. The Animal Family, where cats are fostered in the basement, dogs claim the couches, and chickens roam the backyard. The High-Achieving Family, full of corporate jobs, sports trophies, and advanced placement classes. And then there’s us, the Complaining Family. Where others collect stray cats, merit badges, and brochures from national parks, we collect whines, grumbles, and car rides full of discontentment. I’m not talking about legitimate complaints, like justified anger at bad government policies or physical pain that leaves you breathless. I’m talking about point2 6 C I N C I N N AT I M A G A Z I N E . C O M N O V E M B E R 2 0 2 1
less, unproductive griping and grousing. I’m not immune from complaining and certainly do my share of venting, but I don’t think anyone would call me a habitual complainer. And yet I wound up marrying one. For the longest time, my husband’s grumbling felt mostly like angsty humor and charming hyperbole. Oh you and your silly curmudgeon ways, I would think. But then the thing happened that always changes everything in a relationship: We had kids. In their chubby babyhoods, these sprite-like creatures were full of wonder at things like butterflies and staircases. But now they’re middle-school age, which means the sprite is gone and, from their point of view, everything basically sucks. So now my husband and my kids each have a version of, The world is shit and woe is me to be stuck in it. The whines, the injustices, and the dissatisfaction all create a soundtrack of complaining that my three loved ones harmonize around. I ignore it until I can’t, at which point I start compiling their list of complaints in my head like a prosecutor building her case, until I inevitably explode and freak them out by screaming something like, Everyone shut up right now! It’s a family rule—my rule, in fact—that we’re never supposed to say Shut up! to each other. The three of them complain. I complain about their complaining. Surely, this is all dysfunctional. THIS PAST SUMMER WAS A GREAT EXample. It started with my husband complaining that there even was a summer—as in, a time when children weren’t in school. “Holidays, in-service days, spring break, and they get out in May,” he said. “They barely even have school!” I’ve heard this refrain since our oldest child started kindergarten, so I just I rolled my eyes and ignored it. In July, we took a vacation on Lake Michigan. This meant spending money to rent a house, which was met with only mild grumbling from my husband. Paying a cat sitter seemed much more offensive to him (“The expenses just never end!”), even though our preteen daughter has made a business of cat sitting herself. Whaaaatever. We hadn’t been anywhere since 2019, and I was so happy to actually be going somewhere that even his silly objections ILLUSTR ATIO N BY D O L A SU N
