On family, most likely filled with cloying moments and aphorisms, but no less truthful for all that.
it's Tuesday, which is my birthday of course, and also Deadliest Catch day-- an added bonus. One of the few television shows I follow. One of the few shows that are worth following, really. I fangirl over this show.
The reason I love it so much is that it's so real. It's reality tv as it should be-- unscripted, unset, unencumbered (for the most part) by the presence of the cameras. So very little showboating. And the reason that's possible revolves entirely around the kind of men on the show.
Simple men. Men who don't want glory or camera-hogging or their faces plastered all over the world. Men who go out and do a hard job the best way they know how. And there's this incredible sense of camaraderie, and behind all the cursing and the joking around and the harsh words there is a very real, deep sense of love and understanding going on between them.
Living as I do in a place where everything is so fake, most of the time, and surrounded people so bland and boring and consumed with the desire to own things to fill the emptiness they don't even know is walking around inside them, it's refreshing. It takes me home, to my own humble beginnings; to the kind of man my father is.
I'm not sure I can adequately describe what my roots mean to me. What growing up poor meant to me. It brought the important things out in stark relief-- family, togetherness, love, peace with yourself. When you wipe away the bullshit of fancy educations and expensive cars and designer clothes and the rest of that crap the upper middle class spoils their kids with, the things that are really important tend to seep through, into you, much clearer and cleaner than they could have. Less filtered, more condensed; strong black coffee from a percolator, hot enough to burn, rather than weak , tepid starbucks in a paper cup.
I know my parents wanted to give us more, do more, be more. I know they regret not having been able to give us everything we wanted. But at the end of the day I'm thankful I didn't have it. I'm thankful, these years later, for the kind of worries I had-- the kind of worries no kid should have. I'm thankful they showed me what a simple life is, and how happy that can be, and also how back-breakingly hard. I learned something about strength, about standing iron-straight in the face of adversity, about screaming right back into its face, and about just. carrying. on. Because that's what you do. You carry on. You don't give up, you don't fall over, you don't accept the hand that's been dealt. You make a new hand, and you do it for yourself as much as you do it for the ones you love, because every moment in this world is some kind of struggle, and how we conquer those struggles, how we overcome them and translate them within our own personal matrix, is what's really important.
I learned that education does not equal intelligence; that the job you have does not define you.
I learned that it's easy to be indignant about things like hunting as animal cruelty until you actually need that meat to live.
I learned it's easy to judge, but hard to judge correctly.
I learned how little money matters, and how much family does.
I learned that you need to be your own White Knight; but that family will always be there to help you gird for war.
I learned that hardness is not to be confused with indifference; that emotion is not a weakness.
I learned how little the trappings of life matter, and how much the way you use what you have does.
I learned that the most important education I will ever receive came not from a prestigious university or conversation with someone at the head of a classroom, but at the foot of a kitchen table with my mouth shut and my ears open.
And there are moments within the diorama of my childhood that are hard, and sharp, and still cut when I think about them, and will always scar; in a way I don't think I ever really had an adolescence, but went straight from knowing nothing to knowing too much but still being powerless. I don't mean to suggest my life was pastoral; often it was anything but, and it was a valuable, a decidedly heavy lesson to learn, a lesson rife with the violent flourish of the initial wounding, and the sharp sting of the antiseptic to follow. Each lesson may have left a mark on my soul, but they were not bad lessons to be burdened with.
My childhood was also perfect, and I wouldn't change a thing.
For every moment I spent in hushed shock while my parents argued about whether or not they were going to lose the house, or whether or not they'd have food for us all, or aching for the quiet despair in the eyes of the family around me, for every hour I spent despairing that a perfect GPA and every student activity in the book wouldn't get me the full scholarship I needed for college (It did, though I squandered it) there were equally brilliant moments, pure, golden childhood moments spent sneaking fresh peas off t he back garden plot, or, one glorious birthday, embarking on a scavenger hunt across all two acres to find my hidden birthday presents. (There weren't a lot of them, that year. I don't even remember what they were. But I do remember the incredible thrill of waking, that sunlit morning, to find a bouquet of wildflowers next to my bed, and a hand-drawn map. I remember each hastily written clue, a rhyme for each, tied to a branch or a patch of grass or an old tire. I remember ribbons on a tree, packages behind a stump, and although I have done much since then, felt much, I may never feel as special again as I did on that day. Even that young, I knew what mattered wasn't what was behind the soft tissue paper, or how quickly I could tear it apart to get to the simple, handmade presents hidden within. I knew what mattered, what made my heart swell then and what makes it swell again now, was that my family loved me enough to go through all of this effort to make a young girl's day as special, as absolutely magical as possible. There is nothing in this world I would trade that memory for.
And having reached the point in my life where I can have nearly anything I want within reason, I find myself longing for a handmade birthday present.
I worry sometimes that in striving to provide our son with everything we didn't have, Brad and I are doing him a disservice. That in removing the struggle and the pain, we remove the lesson, the core truths; that the more we dress up his life with activities and entitlements and fancy demonstrations of love, we'll cause him to miss the soft crinkle of tissue paper and the smooth twist of ribbons in a tree.
And then I remember that 500 miles away, in a state that will always be my home, in the shadow of mountains so old as to have seen the passing of ages, lives an old man and woman in an ancient, creaking house, in whose eyes all of these things can be read. And I pray to god that they are there to help me show him these truths. That in the eyes of these people, who are as hard as the granite carved from those mountains and tempered by the inexorable grind of their own personal glaciers, glaciers borne from a lifetime of hardship, he will read the book of their experiences and sit at the kitchen table with his mouth shut and his ears open.
Their lives are especially hard this year. My nephew is battling cancer; my oldest sister has had two surgeries in the last month; their pet parrot, an animal who was an integral part of the family, has died; another sister is battling a nasty divorce and trying to hold herself together (and doing an admirable job) for the sake of her kids; yet another sister's husband may have a brain tumor.
And when I think of these tragedies, I feel another wounding, more antiseptic. But I am confident they will persevere, like mountains. I am confident there will always be home.
The reason I love it so much is that it's so real. It's reality tv as it should be-- unscripted, unset, unencumbered (for the most part) by the presence of the cameras. So very little showboating. And the reason that's possible revolves entirely around the kind of men on the show.
Simple men. Men who don't want glory or camera-hogging or their faces plastered all over the world. Men who go out and do a hard job the best way they know how. And there's this incredible sense of camaraderie, and behind all the cursing and the joking around and the harsh words there is a very real, deep sense of love and understanding going on between them.
Living as I do in a place where everything is so fake, most of the time, and surrounded people so bland and boring and consumed with the desire to own things to fill the emptiness they don't even know is walking around inside them, it's refreshing. It takes me home, to my own humble beginnings; to the kind of man my father is.
I'm not sure I can adequately describe what my roots mean to me. What growing up poor meant to me. It brought the important things out in stark relief-- family, togetherness, love, peace with yourself. When you wipe away the bullshit of fancy educations and expensive cars and designer clothes and the rest of that crap the upper middle class spoils their kids with, the things that are really important tend to seep through, into you, much clearer and cleaner than they could have. Less filtered, more condensed; strong black coffee from a percolator, hot enough to burn, rather than weak , tepid starbucks in a paper cup.
I know my parents wanted to give us more, do more, be more. I know they regret not having been able to give us everything we wanted. But at the end of the day I'm thankful I didn't have it. I'm thankful, these years later, for the kind of worries I had-- the kind of worries no kid should have. I'm thankful they showed me what a simple life is, and how happy that can be, and also how back-breakingly hard. I learned something about strength, about standing iron-straight in the face of adversity, about screaming right back into its face, and about just. carrying. on. Because that's what you do. You carry on. You don't give up, you don't fall over, you don't accept the hand that's been dealt. You make a new hand, and you do it for yourself as much as you do it for the ones you love, because every moment in this world is some kind of struggle, and how we conquer those struggles, how we overcome them and translate them within our own personal matrix, is what's really important.
I learned that education does not equal intelligence; that the job you have does not define you.
I learned that it's easy to be indignant about things like hunting as animal cruelty until you actually need that meat to live.
I learned it's easy to judge, but hard to judge correctly.
I learned how little money matters, and how much family does.
I learned that you need to be your own White Knight; but that family will always be there to help you gird for war.
I learned that hardness is not to be confused with indifference; that emotion is not a weakness.
I learned how little the trappings of life matter, and how much the way you use what you have does.
I learned that the most important education I will ever receive came not from a prestigious university or conversation with someone at the head of a classroom, but at the foot of a kitchen table with my mouth shut and my ears open.
And there are moments within the diorama of my childhood that are hard, and sharp, and still cut when I think about them, and will always scar; in a way I don't think I ever really had an adolescence, but went straight from knowing nothing to knowing too much but still being powerless. I don't mean to suggest my life was pastoral; often it was anything but, and it was a valuable, a decidedly heavy lesson to learn, a lesson rife with the violent flourish of the initial wounding, and the sharp sting of the antiseptic to follow. Each lesson may have left a mark on my soul, but they were not bad lessons to be burdened with.
My childhood was also perfect, and I wouldn't change a thing.
For every moment I spent in hushed shock while my parents argued about whether or not they were going to lose the house, or whether or not they'd have food for us all, or aching for the quiet despair in the eyes of the family around me, for every hour I spent despairing that a perfect GPA and every student activity in the book wouldn't get me the full scholarship I needed for college (It did, though I squandered it) there were equally brilliant moments, pure, golden childhood moments spent sneaking fresh peas off t he back garden plot, or, one glorious birthday, embarking on a scavenger hunt across all two acres to find my hidden birthday presents. (There weren't a lot of them, that year. I don't even remember what they were. But I do remember the incredible thrill of waking, that sunlit morning, to find a bouquet of wildflowers next to my bed, and a hand-drawn map. I remember each hastily written clue, a rhyme for each, tied to a branch or a patch of grass or an old tire. I remember ribbons on a tree, packages behind a stump, and although I have done much since then, felt much, I may never feel as special again as I did on that day. Even that young, I knew what mattered wasn't what was behind the soft tissue paper, or how quickly I could tear it apart to get to the simple, handmade presents hidden within. I knew what mattered, what made my heart swell then and what makes it swell again now, was that my family loved me enough to go through all of this effort to make a young girl's day as special, as absolutely magical as possible. There is nothing in this world I would trade that memory for.
And having reached the point in my life where I can have nearly anything I want within reason, I find myself longing for a handmade birthday present.
I worry sometimes that in striving to provide our son with everything we didn't have, Brad and I are doing him a disservice. That in removing the struggle and the pain, we remove the lesson, the core truths; that the more we dress up his life with activities and entitlements and fancy demonstrations of love, we'll cause him to miss the soft crinkle of tissue paper and the smooth twist of ribbons in a tree.
And then I remember that 500 miles away, in a state that will always be my home, in the shadow of mountains so old as to have seen the passing of ages, lives an old man and woman in an ancient, creaking house, in whose eyes all of these things can be read. And I pray to god that they are there to help me show him these truths. That in the eyes of these people, who are as hard as the granite carved from those mountains and tempered by the inexorable grind of their own personal glaciers, glaciers borne from a lifetime of hardship, he will read the book of their experiences and sit at the kitchen table with his mouth shut and his ears open.
Their lives are especially hard this year. My nephew is battling cancer; my oldest sister has had two surgeries in the last month; their pet parrot, an animal who was an integral part of the family, has died; another sister is battling a nasty divorce and trying to hold herself together (and doing an admirable job) for the sake of her kids; yet another sister's husband may have a brain tumor.
And when I think of these tragedies, I feel another wounding, more antiseptic. But I am confident they will persevere, like mountains. I am confident there will always be home.