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flexagonAn excerpt from one of my dad's recent emails to me (it will make more sense if you know he grew up on a farm):
The middle class life is expensive. I am not really sure I was cut out for all
the comforts and the financial obligations. However, I have never lived
better. Clean clothes every day and more or less standard meals. It is an odd
life compared to my past history. I have not repeated my former mistakes. We
have a regular bed (king size), washer and dryer, and whatever Karen wants.
There is still something unreal about living so far from the soil. I am not
complaining but it is just so different.
Sigh. How touching. I remember rather well that I grew up in that environment of former mistakes (no normal beds, no washer and dryer, only a tiny hot water heater that wasn't enough to both let my mother wash dishes and let me take a shower on the same morning, concrete floors...), but, as an adult receiving a letter from an adult, I can also identify. Possibly there was as much distance between his farm life and his life with Karen as there has been between my life with my parents and my life now. I wrote back and told him that I sometimes can't get used to middle class life myself, and that's true. Mostly, though, my worries are along the lines of what if the dream ends? It is hard to adjust down in lifestyle, but it's also hard to adjust up, and it's impossible to talk about this with most people. On average, people in their early adult years are worse off than their parents, and thus worse off than they were in their own childhoods, because they've stayed in the same economic bracket and are younger. It's just bizarre that the very person who caused the issue for me is nearly the only one who understands part of it now.
On a slightly related note... if my dad is slowly understanding how to live in an environment of diminished economic scarcity, my mom is only slowly learning how to consider herself attractive, and how to have fun. I don't know if I mentioned that I actually saw her in shorts and sandals last summer. And she's slowly experimenting with different styles of shirts. It's a big thing for her. I remember a long time ago, when I was maybe a sophomore in college. My mother was telling me about a coworker who had sent her daughter off for an all-day treatment at a spa as a high-school graduation gift. It's just so different from the ergonomic chair we gave you, she said. And yes, it was. I didn't tell her how bitter it made me to hear that. It would have sent my heart soaring if she had sent me to a spa -- it would have told me she saw some kind of beauty in me, or at least the potential, and considered it all right to pursue that. But how could she have done that, she who so disliked her reflection that she wouldn't walk straight up to a glass door if she could sneak up to it from the side? Impossible. I really think I understand why my dad is so messed up better than I understand why she is so messed up. She had everything, and yet her attitude about herself turned her adult life into an almost unsalvageable situation. (Kudos to her for the almost, and for proving it by eventually getting the hell out of Dodge. But still!)
Please, universe, let me have been a changeling.
If not that, then, please, universe, let me not be fooling myself -- let me truly have learned from these people's mistakes, and let me not fall into the same traps.
The middle class life is expensive. I am not really sure I was cut out for all
the comforts and the financial obligations. However, I have never lived
better. Clean clothes every day and more or less standard meals. It is an odd
life compared to my past history. I have not repeated my former mistakes. We
have a regular bed (king size), washer and dryer, and whatever Karen wants.
There is still something unreal about living so far from the soil. I am not
complaining but it is just so different.
Sigh. How touching. I remember rather well that I grew up in that environment of former mistakes (no normal beds, no washer and dryer, only a tiny hot water heater that wasn't enough to both let my mother wash dishes and let me take a shower on the same morning, concrete floors...), but, as an adult receiving a letter from an adult, I can also identify. Possibly there was as much distance between his farm life and his life with Karen as there has been between my life with my parents and my life now. I wrote back and told him that I sometimes can't get used to middle class life myself, and that's true. Mostly, though, my worries are along the lines of what if the dream ends? It is hard to adjust down in lifestyle, but it's also hard to adjust up, and it's impossible to talk about this with most people. On average, people in their early adult years are worse off than their parents, and thus worse off than they were in their own childhoods, because they've stayed in the same economic bracket and are younger. It's just bizarre that the very person who caused the issue for me is nearly the only one who understands part of it now.
On a slightly related note... if my dad is slowly understanding how to live in an environment of diminished economic scarcity, my mom is only slowly learning how to consider herself attractive, and how to have fun. I don't know if I mentioned that I actually saw her in shorts and sandals last summer. And she's slowly experimenting with different styles of shirts. It's a big thing for her. I remember a long time ago, when I was maybe a sophomore in college. My mother was telling me about a coworker who had sent her daughter off for an all-day treatment at a spa as a high-school graduation gift. It's just so different from the ergonomic chair we gave you, she said. And yes, it was. I didn't tell her how bitter it made me to hear that. It would have sent my heart soaring if she had sent me to a spa -- it would have told me she saw some kind of beauty in me, or at least the potential, and considered it all right to pursue that. But how could she have done that, she who so disliked her reflection that she wouldn't walk straight up to a glass door if she could sneak up to it from the side? Impossible. I really think I understand why my dad is so messed up better than I understand why she is so messed up. She had everything, and yet her attitude about herself turned her adult life into an almost unsalvageable situation. (Kudos to her for the almost, and for proving it by eventually getting the hell out of Dodge. But still!)
Please, universe, let me have been a changeling.
If not that, then, please, universe, let me not be fooling myself -- let me truly have learned from these people's mistakes, and let me not fall into the same traps.
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Date: 2005-12-05 01:39 am (UTC)::hugs::
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Date: 2005-12-05 02:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-05 05:06 am (UTC)And I also understand kinda seeing why they did what they did...they didn't try to hurt us, they just didn't know any better. Which doesn't really change the past, but it can help us get over it. Or at least put it in perspective...