In order to understand me, you should know a little
about my family. My grandparents were all of hearty northern European stock, relatively
recent arrivals to the New World, and embarrassingly poor despite a strong
Protestant faith and a work ethic to match. My parents both grew up in very remote
areas, my mother in flat farm country and my father in the wooded foothills of
the Adirondacks, and they were both very much a product of that geographic and
cultural isolation. We lived in an upper middle class suburb of a mid-sized
industrial city because that’s where the secure (blue collar) jobs and good
schools were, but behind closed doors we lived like we were still out somewhere
in the boondocks. There were always guns and ammo and hunting knives, a
menagerie of animals, Budweiser beer cans by the case, and other miscellaneous booze
bottles around the house. Nothing was ever really very clean, and if we had
nice things they didn’t stay nice for long. Ignorance and fear bred a deep
distrust of anyone who was different from us, which was pretty much everyone in
our area code, and sometimes even our own
extended family. Most of our people lived so far away that we could keep
the worst of it behind closed doors until we got out far away enough where it
didn’t matter anymore. We weren’t the Whites of West Virginia, but we knew
people like them. And there was that stubborn country pride where you fiercely defended
your humble roots without apology because there wasn’t much else to hold on to.
My mother was a very simple woman in every respect.
She had a plain face but a pretty smile, and a docile nature. She wasn’t
unintelligent; she just didn’t have any desire to do very much with herself.
She was not a very good cook and she didn’t do much cleaning up around the
house. There was no motherly instinct that I could observe. She had no fashion
sense and rarely wore jewelry or makeup. She had no real friends or outside
interests. When she wasn’t working or sleeping, she would read or do puzzles. I
suppose, in that respect, she chose a good match with my father. A man like him
couldn’t very well expect much from her, and I’m sure she preferred it that
way. My father was a real character. He was smart but not highly educated, hardworking
but an unruly alcoholic, and extremely self-serving. He was the BMOC when he
and my mother met at a small agricultural college. I imagine, for a wall flower
like her, my dad was the biggest thing that ever happened in her whole life.
She successfully completed her 2 year degree in secretarial science, (which she
would never use), while my father partied and pretended to study business. Really
I think they were both just enjoying the freedom of unchecked youth away from
the oppressiveness of home. She liked to brag that she got married, graduated
college, and had me all in the same year, and that her pregnancy got her out of
gym class that last semester. No shotgun wedding - I did the math as soon as I
knew how to count. I was as legit as I could be, leaving me no convenient
grudge to hold about my unfortunate lot in life. I would also be the only
child, as if I weren’t already destined to be misfit enough. Honestly, they
really did the best they could with me, given their meager resources and the
obvious fact that I was not, well, like them…?
I don’t know how to explain what it’s like growing
up a pseudo-changeling. Nothing ever felt right. I never felt right, and it
seemed the people around me never did either. It all felt so unnatural and surreal
that I couldn’t ever accept it as the way it was supposed to be. There are far
too many photos of me as a child in tears. I don’t know which is worse – that
my family documented it so much or that it was just so frequent that it
couldn’t be helped. In spite of all that, I was still the most responsible
adult in the house before I left grammar school. Such levels of insecurity so
early in life breed a supersaturated sense of responsibility because it feels
like control amidst chaos. I chose as much independence as possible as early as
possible, even before it was permissible, as a means of self-preservation. I
couldn’t wait for it to be earned or granted because nothing in my home went by
any rules, so I seized it to save myself the pain of relying on the unreliable.
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