My mother's grandfather was a writer, a newspaper columnist. Secretly,
I've always wanted my own advice column, like Ask Amy except instead of social
mores and faux pas, mine would focus on empathy - how to live with the people
around you - and be full of fluffy aphorisms, urgencies toward
peacefulness. Put that way, I guess Sut Nam Bonsai is my monthly
column. In that case, isn't it a bummer the funny papers aren't available
on the reverse of every post?
My father's family was full of farmers, business men, and business
women. "They were
not the type to sit still long enough to be contemplative," my mother
said weeks ago when she was visiting, stopping just short of implying
that
writers sit on their cans all day. Truth be told, I love a good
can-sitting, especially in the morning before the treasures of the mind
get flushed down the toilet of daily living.
Scanning for artistic types on my father's side of the family, my mom and I
came up empty. A rare photo of my father's father with all of his
brothers shows the five of them dressed in double-breasted suits, arms crossed,
standing proudly in front of a dark car. Their swirling hair is
otherworldly, impressively cinematic. All are handsome,
practical men, or men who clearly think of themselves as grounded beings, like my father
himself. And all are possibly most familiar with tobacco farming, with the
chores and responsibilities that go with it, and with family duty.
My
mother's side of the family cradles some comical eccentrics, but
I'm
not convinced I owe my writing impulses to them. The truth is, my
father's
emails are stunning feats of creativity and word play.
So,
too, are his abilities to see people for who they are and celebrate their
flaws
with love. This is, I'm sure, what makes him a successful sales person,
along with his dazzling handshake/self-introduction, which Tim and I
used to
joke Bear picked up somewhere along the way, as Bear's friendliness and
lack of
self-conscious entry into strangers' personal space amused us to no end
when he
was alive. The ability to celebrate flaws is also, I believe, what
makes fiction possible - the
ability to honor humanity where others might judge or rush past.
In addition to saying that writing for me is, in essence, a way to love what is
broken or in pain, I guess I'm also trying to say where creativity is
born. For me, it comes both from exposure to the arts, which is for sure
my mother's gift to her children, and from land itself. In this
case, my personal relationship to place began in the town where my parents grew
up, and on the family farms of my father's family, on land that belonged to
his parents and their parents.
(In a recent email, my father wrote that all of his grandparents were
farmers, as were all previous generations, dating back to the 1700s.)
Most specifically, my relationship to place began on the tobacco farm on
which my dad's mother grew up, where
my father spent his boyhood summers in the fields.
At the close of graduate school, my move to Colorado was a deliberate choice to
expose my body to a different rhythm. Tim wanted to explore the grandeur
of the West, and be within driving distance to the national parks and geological
craziness that only the West can offer. Having spent the last three years
living in a coastal town, I wanted to expose my body to space: to aridity, to
altitude, to desert information. In choosing our little boom town, we loved
both the quiet culture of its university influence and the rocks and mountains
and ponds surrounding it.
In doing so, we have especially aligned with the creatures who live
off this land. I understand now that I am obsessed with place, which is funny because the literary magazine
of my graduate school featured place-based narrative, yet I stayed away as if
it had fleas. (Remember
when I said I come to things slowly?) My favorite movies are place-based: A River Runs Through It, Legends of the Fall, ...Shoot. Do my favorite movies simply
feature Brad Pitt? My favorite writers are place-based, too: Jim
Harrison, Stuart Dybek, Josephine Humphreys, Joy
Williams. I love to move and, like a scientist taking water samples, bring emotional
instruments to different towns and take readings and study what I find. I
am interested in biology for its spiritual medicine: I want to learn what I can
from animals in order to apply it to my species. Or, as Joe Hutto says in his new book, Touching the Wild: Living With the Mule Deer of Deadman Gulch,
"...a more accurate description of this particular study would be the
expression of some irresistible necessity to find sanctuary in the
proximity of wild things."
Speaking of Species
(Hey-ho! Lukis and I recorded a Rabbit
Hat Fix episode on that movie. Check it out!), Tim and
I had a baby six weeks ago. Okay, I had the baby while Tim supported me
like a mofo.
Here are some pictures of our little bean who sleeps three-fifths of the day, is
golden and plump as a Thanksgiving turkey, and is by far our greatest collaboration
yet. I am so grateful she is finally here. As I told my friend, I
would not have cared if I had to be dragged behind a tractor for days to get
her out. Labor wasn't quite like that (I'm still searching for its right
metaphor - there is none) but if the prize at the end was this little miss, I
would have signed up for that, too.
I know personal histories can sometimes be a snooze-fest so thanks for indulging this exploration,
if you made it all the way through.
When I fully launch my career as an advice columnist, I will focus
exclusively on tackling your son’s trashy new girlfriend, your troublesome
flirty neighbor, and sisters-in-law who inevitably bring the wrong dish to
Thanksgiving.
Sending love from our little family nest, which turns out to be quite big
when you don't leave it very often.
XOXO,
Kara
P.S. I read a book of stories called The
Women Were Leaving the Men by Andy Mozina the first week of being a mom.
The book's title story about women up and divorcing their devoted husbands for
no discernible reason is fascinating. (My grandmother's theory about our country's high divorce rate, by the way, is
that "women's lib" is to blame. This opinion somehow ignores
her own admirable and pathological independence, the same independence I
inherited which threatens to ruin many of my relationships daily. I would
like to see someone tell my grandmother what to do and live to tell about it,
but give women in general equal rights/pay/control over their lives? No
way!)
I recommend the whole of Mr. Mozina's collection, although the first three stories, of a more
experimental nature/narrative, were difficult for me to overcome. It's
worth digesting them and their structure, I think, and then your reward is a
ton of relationship stories exploring career identity against rust belt city
settings. Failing relationships, failing economies, troubled personal
identities? Yes, please! This is the stuff of great literature, and I gobbled
it right up.
