Growing up with a father in politics and a mother who is a socialite, how did their absence and your upbringing by nannies shape your understanding of family and independence?
“Oh boy.” She laughed, unable to hold it in. “How much time do you have?” A smirk crossed her lips. “I grew up with Nannies when I was a kid. I think that my parents had me because they were supposed to. They always followed the ‘right path’. Grow up, go to the best schools, get married, get a law degree, have a kid, make sure they look good in the campaign photos. I think that my parents very much saw me as the next step in ‘the right kind of life’.” She admitted.
“When I didn’t fit into that, when I didn’t want to do pageants anymore, when I dated and ran around with a local boy from a different family, when I didn’t want to go to law school…”. One of her shoulders shrugged up. “When I wasn’t the ideal and didn’t want to be the ideal, they lost interest. To my mother I was kind of like an out of season purse; an accessory that would do more harm to their reputation than good. So, they stopped bringing me to events, the stopped taking me to Washington for extended stays, they just…lost all interest.”
Of course, what she left out was that even though she didn’t want those things, it didn’t mean that she wasn’t trying. For years she had. She might not have been a cheer leader, but she was State in Track and Field. She might not have wanted to go to law school, but she was always first in her class.
When that didn’t work, she acted out. She’d tried to get attention, would run away, and stay at the Stackhouse’s for weeks but no one seemed to notice- or they knew where she was and simply didn’t care. She would get in trouble for fights and go to jail but then be bailed out and it would be covered up and no one would say anything. When she was 15 her parents decided they didn’t even need Nannies in the house anymore and that she could take care of herself. They would have people come and check, make sure someone delivered groceries and make sure that she had what she needed but would simply not be there.
That’s when she had basically been living at her boyfriends with his little sister and grandmother who had raised them. It was the closest thing to a real family that she had ever known. They would have family dinners; Adele would cook for them and taught her how to cook- one of the biggest influences in her career- and general do what she suspected real families did. It was a really good time and she genuinely thought that she was going to Marry that boy. Have that family for real.
However, when she was 17, she found out that he had been having relations with other women this entire time. It was almost like she couldn’t help himself. Piper was Shattered. She left him but in leaving him it felt like losing her actual family too. His little sister was her best friend, and his grandmother was like a real mother. She knew that she could still go over but it felt…. weird. Different and she knew that she wasn’t really part of that family- maybe she never had been. Sometimes she thinks that this event was the real solidifier for her thoughts on family. It certainly is one of the main causes for her aversion to emotional relationships.
The idea of having something and losing it is far more traumatizing than never having it at all.
