Rambling about Junebug and cousins...
I took the opportunity Monday morning to watch Junebug and it has sent me into a bit of reflection about my "country upbringing" and the way I relate with my family and especially my extended family. I'm certainly not as urbane nor smug (I hope!) as the George character, nor do I have siblings left behind (my sister lizzie1111 is doing just fine raising her family out in the desert, thank you) but I certainly do have a bit of a stilted relationship with most of my aunts, uncles, cousins, etc.
Over Christmas I saw most of them and had an unusual long conversation with my cousin Jason. I don't think I'd seen him more than once in 10 years or so. In that time he's bounced from job to job, doing his best to support himself and his kids who he doesn't get to see too often. When we were children I always looked up to him as he seems so artistically gifted, so gentle yet strong. We would do things like explore my great-grandmother's 90-acre land and make contour maps of the entire place. My contributions were always-precise scales and angles while Jason provided artistic representations of the different animals and trees we came across...very much along the lines of the Christopher Robin map of 100 Aker Woods yet much more detailed and fantastic. We were a team yet all of that changed when I was 17 and he was 18. I went off to college, then grad school, then the life I have now...he struggled to get into schools and ended up working at the prison where his dad worked. Really I was the one who drifted away, I was the one that only occasionally inquired about his well-being via my mom. I was the "asshole" very much in the way that the character George was the "asshole" in Junebug (despite his brother Johnny seeming more despicable). I certainly returned to East Texas last December with the wrong attitude about myself and about my extended family.
That attitude melted away once Jason and I stepped outside to talk away from the rest of the family. It was readily apparent that despite our circumstances we are still in so many ways the same two boys we were 25 years ago. I am so proud of the man he has become. He is still amazingly gifted, still so gentle and strong...strong in so many ways that i am not. I have had things fall in my lap most of my life while he has hewn his life out of the materials he has had at hand. I could never accomplish the things he has and gotten past the adversity he has. Never.
It's very easy to look at people and draw conclusions. It's a different thing to really get to know them. I feel horribly guilty about the attitude I've had the past 20 years or so. There are millions upon millions of Jasons out there. There are people right here in Wilkes County, NC that look, talk, act, live just like the family in Junebug. I had dinner with one such family tonight. They take their Amish neighbors to the dentist, they know what's going on in their part of the county, they are wonderful honest people. They may not vote like me, they may not know a single band that's in my iTunes (or even what iTunes is), they may never see the world....but I shouldn't think for a second that I am smarter than them, better than them nor happier than them.
It's easier to type these things than to actually live it...but at least my eyes have been opened now.
Over Christmas I saw most of them and had an unusual long conversation with my cousin Jason. I don't think I'd seen him more than once in 10 years or so. In that time he's bounced from job to job, doing his best to support himself and his kids who he doesn't get to see too often. When we were children I always looked up to him as he seems so artistically gifted, so gentle yet strong. We would do things like explore my great-grandmother's 90-acre land and make contour maps of the entire place. My contributions were always-precise scales and angles while Jason provided artistic representations of the different animals and trees we came across...very much along the lines of the Christopher Robin map of 100 Aker Woods yet much more detailed and fantastic. We were a team yet all of that changed when I was 17 and he was 18. I went off to college, then grad school, then the life I have now...he struggled to get into schools and ended up working at the prison where his dad worked. Really I was the one who drifted away, I was the one that only occasionally inquired about his well-being via my mom. I was the "asshole" very much in the way that the character George was the "asshole" in Junebug (despite his brother Johnny seeming more despicable). I certainly returned to East Texas last December with the wrong attitude about myself and about my extended family.
That attitude melted away once Jason and I stepped outside to talk away from the rest of the family. It was readily apparent that despite our circumstances we are still in so many ways the same two boys we were 25 years ago. I am so proud of the man he has become. He is still amazingly gifted, still so gentle and strong...strong in so many ways that i am not. I have had things fall in my lap most of my life while he has hewn his life out of the materials he has had at hand. I could never accomplish the things he has and gotten past the adversity he has. Never.
It's very easy to look at people and draw conclusions. It's a different thing to really get to know them. I feel horribly guilty about the attitude I've had the past 20 years or so. There are millions upon millions of Jasons out there. There are people right here in Wilkes County, NC that look, talk, act, live just like the family in Junebug. I had dinner with one such family tonight. They take their Amish neighbors to the dentist, they know what's going on in their part of the county, they are wonderful honest people. They may not vote like me, they may not know a single band that's in my iTunes (or even what iTunes is), they may never see the world....but I shouldn't think for a second that I am smarter than them, better than them nor happier than them.
It's easier to type these things than to actually live it...but at least my eyes have been opened now.