On gratitude and being my mother's daughter
Seiza was looking at my kitchen and said something to the effect of 'A sink and four working burners? Maybe you're not totally Ande's daughter after all.' It was cute and lighthearted, we both laughed. And then I got to thinking about it. Okay, maybe it's something I think about a lot: my life doesn't look much like hers.
Mom grew up with stability and material comfort. There are a lot of good things to say about her family and her childhood, she had a lot of advantages. But, due respect to her family, she didn't grow up with some of the things that were most important to her, she had to strike out on her own to find and make those things. She had to reject, sometimes pretty radically, the values she came from to get to the values that worked for her. Independence. Emotional honesty. Social justice. Beauty in every form. Community. Personal expression. Art. Resourcefulness. Appreciation of the absurd. Intellectual exploration. Play for its own sake.
She had to run really hard to find that for herself. It's not like that for me, I don't have to give up anything to have those values and all the good and the joy they bring to my life. I can find them anywhere. I don't have to run away from stability to get there. That's where I live. I can decorate how I like.
I get scared sometimes that living my conventionalish yuppie east coast lifestyle will, or maybe has, cost me my hippie weirdo soul. But no, that's her indelible gift to me. There's no losing it.
The apple doesn't fall three dimensionally from the tree. It gets to be both near and far.
Mom grew up with stability and material comfort. There are a lot of good things to say about her family and her childhood, she had a lot of advantages. But, due respect to her family, she didn't grow up with some of the things that were most important to her, she had to strike out on her own to find and make those things. She had to reject, sometimes pretty radically, the values she came from to get to the values that worked for her. Independence. Emotional honesty. Social justice. Beauty in every form. Community. Personal expression. Art. Resourcefulness. Appreciation of the absurd. Intellectual exploration. Play for its own sake.
She had to run really hard to find that for herself. It's not like that for me, I don't have to give up anything to have those values and all the good and the joy they bring to my life. I can find them anywhere. I don't have to run away from stability to get there. That's where I live. I can decorate how I like.
I get scared sometimes that living my conventionalish yuppie east coast lifestyle will, or maybe has, cost me my hippie weirdo soul. But no, that's her indelible gift to me. There's no losing it.
The apple doesn't fall three dimensionally from the tree. It gets to be both near and far.