#uncle bert

Hello, fruits! This March we are running a fanwork event to shine the spotlight on Max and her community. The prompts are loose suggestions—we just hope you will take this opportunity to focus your love, time, and effort and Max and characters from her half of the story. Go forth and create !!!

thinking a lot about the role of mothers and motherhood in a league of their own and specifically how max and carson each negotiate their mothers’ and families’ legacies.

max sees the life that her mother has planned for her - the church, the salon, the entrepreneurial spirit, and the sense of pragmatism - and feels a mixed sense of fear, anger, confused gratitude, guilt, and ultimately rejection and invisibility.

and then bert shows her this entirely different life that is possible, with these shadows and edges that remind her of her mother but a warmth and comfort that she’s always craved. and, bert shows her this previously unfathomable life lived with true authenticity.

carson fears, deep down, that her destiny might be to follow in her mother’s footsteps - to run away and to destroy her husband in the process. but in some ways, i have wondered if she was also a possibility model - even if it ruined her family, she knew it was an option to run.

and her resistance to the idea of becoming a mother was so subversive in its own right, even before greta changed her world. within the box of being a small-town housewife in idaho in the late 30s/early 40s, that must be among the most radical things one can do.

and then you have maybelle, a mother and in many ways a mother to the peaches, but also ally to her queer teammates perhaps without truly knowing it. and clance, who clearly admires toni and sees her as a lighthouse as she prepares navigates marriage and pregnancy.

and you have edgar, who deeply respects his wife and also adores his daughter, caught in the middle of these two powerful women and trying to sort out who he is going to be for each of them as they navigate their dynamic. and carson’s father, who is merely absent.

The Lennon & Stanley family album. Various photos of John’s relatives. 

Polly Lennon, John’s paternal grandmother

John’s aunts, Mater, Harrie and Mimi with Cynthia. c. 1964?

John with cousin David (baby) and cousin Leila. 

Bobby Dykins (Twitchy) with John’s sister, Jackie

John in Edinburgh (furthest left, couldn’t you tell?!) with Mater and Bert, and his Cousins Leila, Michael and David.

Alf Lennon (middle front)

John (furthest right) with his cousins, Stanley Parkes and Leila. 

John’s aunt Edith - Alf’s sister, and her daughter, John’s cousin, Sandra Jones.

John’s grandmother, Polly with John’s uncle Charlie, Alf’s brother at Edith’s wedding.