Welcome Home

We moved to the farm when in September when I was 9, and our first house that our family had was a mobile home. I remember the first day that my siblings and I came home from our new school, and saw the house sitting in a field, situated between a pear and persimmon tree. The house looked like it didn't belong there on the farm. The land had a life of its own, pastures, creeks, hills, and forests. It seemed confused by the sudden structure propped on blocks, disrupting the wild harmony of the country. Homes are usually built over a period of time in the country, like the growth of a gradual relationship between man and wild. 

But not our home. It was just there one day, without water, plumbing, or electricity. We used candles and kerosene lamps for our first couple of days. For our family, it was like we were reenacting the pioneer stories, and I can't recall any complaints to using the portable toilets and lack of TV. The newly disturbed earth from our habitation created encounters with snakes, spiders, scorpions, and wasps. Electricity came the first week, and we had plenty of light to see our new neighbors. 

Water took a long time to come to us because we had to dig a well. Our weekend routine was to load up the truck with water bags and buckets and drive to family who lived 40 minutes away. We went to their bathtubs and filled up with as much water as we could carry, in order to be able to wash, eat, and dispose of waste during the coming week on the farm. My brother, sister, and I were ordered to bring all of our clothes so that they could be washed, and to take a bath while we had the chance in the city. 

This went on for 3 months. One day, when again my siblings and I came home from school, we saw something out of place. As we got off the bus and stepped onto dirt path that led to our house, we looked up to see a towering metal structure roaring away the fall afternoon. It was a couple of hours before we even stepped foot into the house, as we watched with fascination as the drill rig churned away at the earth in search of water. Eventually the men working for the drilling company called it a day and gave up, finding no source of water down to 80 ft. The next day, in another spot, they found water at only 15 ft, and built a well 30 yards to the south of our house. 

The water was-and still is sandy, but it's the best water I have ever tasted in my life. The underground spring that our well used was naturally cool and clean. I remember my dad saying that he rarely had to change filters on the pump because it was so pure. 

Within the next month, we built septic tanks, plumbing fixtures, and a well-house. At the age of 9, I learned just how much work was need for the basic utilities that you take for granted living in the city. It was nearly winter by the time that we could take showers and flush toilets. I can't remember if it was a relief. Probably because the work was just getting started...

vive sine desiderium

I wonder if he misses me as much as I miss him. I get taken aback sometimes with how painful our relationship has become. Like most things that are negative in my life, I ignore it. I pretend it isn't a problem and therefore it can't hurt me...except those times when it hits me.

I miss him so much. I wonder if it grieves him. I wonder if he thinks back on how close we were, how much we experienced together. He's the single-most link to my childhood, and I to his, and now we don't so much as speak. Maybe he doesn't know how to fix it. Maybe he's ashamed. 

I don't know why he ignores me. I've begged him to tell me what's wrong. I wonder if it's something I did. I wonder if he cares at all. I thought moving back home would change things. I thought I could help him. Sometimes when I think about him it's like he's so far, almost like a ghost. Like, I knew who he was, but he is no more. Which I suppose is like he died. But he's not, and that is a peace of mind. I'll be there for him when he's ready to come back to being my brother. I miss him.

par example

I am living very near where I grew up now, and with that experiencing things and being around people day-to-day for the first time in nearly a decade. 

It's odd how so many things about home have continued to stay the same; it's as if everything remains frozen or isolated in some habitat that keeps away change...take my dad for example.

I have always remembered him as a patient, wise, hard-working man who loved my siblings and I--and my mother even more. Nothing has changed. How is it that I feel I have changed enormously, several times throughout my years, yet my father seems to me to have had no transformation? Maybe it's because of age, our experiences, our personalities, or it even could be the fact that external perceptions are often misplaced.

And yet I write this because of my dad, who exists in my mind almost no differently than the way I remember him growing up except for one thing: his slowness to anger. Like any child growing up with a father, they can remember him cursing and yelling in frustration with something. It's usually a humbling experience because there is this figure who is always right while you are always wrong...an individual who is strong and unwavering...wise and deep in experience--who is suddenly subject to a fate that is beyond his control. 

Over the last few months, I have seen some unlucky things happen with my dad. And he simply deals with it now with a laugh; a joke at himself and a deflection to the fates that have continued to befuddle him while I was away. He doesn't yell and curse anymore, and somehow this reaction was always in him in other things he did. It's merely as if his sense of justice and equilibrium with the world has stayed the same, but now he has learned to accept it for himself.

I pray that I can inherit this wisdom!

Where I come from

My parents are very keen on genealogy and they love to spend countless hours finding links in their families trees...often competing with one another to see who is closer linked to a famous person in history or who can trace their lineage back further.

More recently as I have been interested though, I have come to discover that they have to use distant links even to start somewhere. They use their grandparents siblings or cousins, great aunts or uncles, 2nd or 3rd generation cousins--all as jumping points to start working back. 

In such a way I have realized that all of their, and ultimately my family lineages in a direct descent are unknown. We have definitely been on the losing side of history on both my mother and father's side.

My mother's father was an Scottish-Irish immigrant who came over with his half-dozen brothers and sisters, and they grew up in Texas during the great depression. They left their clan of McGarrah's behind in the UK in order to find a way out of their poverty, only to find an uglier face of it here in the US.

My mother's mother was an alcoholic Osage Indian, and so was her mother and mother before her of Pettit's. I don't need to mention how well the records and treatment were kept of Native Americans...

My father's father was one of 12 Catholic Bennett children that moved from Missouri, Arkansas, to Texas during the depression. Their father was an orphan and nothing is known about his family...well he was an orphan...dead end there.

My father's mother was a Russian/Polish Jew. Her family of Schmidts and Feinbergs came over from Vilnius in modern day Lithuania around the time of the Russian pograms and moved to Brooklyn. Not much of a direction there, it's definitely not as if I can trace any Jews living in Poland, Russia, or anywhere in eastern Europe for that matter.

At least I know who my mother and father are, and who their parents were. That's something! I wish I could go back further though.

Here is an ode from the Greek Pindaros:

Even high deeds of prowess

Have a great darkness if they lack song;

We can hold up a mirror to fine doings

In one way only:

If with the help of Memory in her glittering crown

Recompense is found for labour

In words' echoing melodies.

Wilted

uproot by Grace Kim

I'm like a plant that has been grounded and pulled out so many times that my roots have become torn and lost. And yet I have ripped them out myself. Never in my life have I seriously considered that I would stay where I am. It is as if I have always expected to uproot myself time and time again, so often that it seems practically an inevitable and natural course of my life. 

Home is home; in Texas where my mother and father are, with our land and country home. I think it will remain 'home' until I have a family of my own. But as early as high school, I knew that I would leave, I'd go some place new for college. Then, in college I knew that I wouldn't stay there further than my studies, and go some place new for work. And now everywhere that I have worked, I have never thought for a moment that there was any permanence to my dwelling. 

I now realize that my roots have been long gone; there is nothing left to grasp myself into the ground because of the constant planting and break-away. I know my roots can grow back, but I convince myself of the plan to move on to something else, leaving no time for them to truly regenerate.

memories of autumn

Directly in front of the door of our house was a persimmon tree.  I remember my dad put my brother, sister, and I in the bucket of the tractor to pick the fruit during November.  We would be lifted up and moved around to all parts of the tree to harvest as much as we could, dropping the persimmon berries around our feet.  I think my mom used to make a jam out of them, but I recall that I didn't care for the taste.  

The air was usually starting to feel crisp, and I remember brimming with excitement because of the coming of the holidays and change of environment.  Maybe autumn is my favourite season.

I had my appendix removed when I was 11, and I missed a week of school that November.  Fighting boredom, one morning I sat on the front step of the house with my bb gun, looking for some target to practice with.  There was a woodpecker in that same persimmon tree, knocking away about 40ft from me.  I cocked up my gun, took aim, and missed.  The bird seemed to only slightly notice the shot flying past him, but then continued pecking noisily away.  

I cocked, took aim, and remembered my dad mentioning to breathe out when taking a shot to keep steady.  I squeezed the trigger, raising my eyebrows.  I knew I hit the bird, but he didn't move.  The bird stopped moving and remained still...suddenly he leaned forward and turned upside down, resembling a door hinge with his feet locked onto the branch.  After a second he dropped to the ground.  I paced over to my kill of this little bird, I noticed he seemed so much smaller up close.  

My shot went right to his head.  I assumed he must of been killed instantly and his body stiffened, contributing to his silly death flop.  I felt bad seeing him there on the ground in the front yard.  Even by that age, through growing up on a farm and hunting, I had ended plenty of animals before, but I hadn't killed one needlessly.  I don't like personifying animals, and I don't think the bird had any feelings, but I felt remorse for taking his life for no reason.  The woodpecker was alive and well only 20 seconds before, going about his instinctive work...and I ended him only because I had the power to.  I learned something that autumn day which I will never forget.

I've been here before

Yes indeed, sometimes it takes a collection of experiences for better or worse to understand what it is we truly want to do with our work.  I've found out for me that it has been a deductive process, and although I like it here in DC, I have come to realize that I want to help people who need help rather than helping those that don't.

For a career, I would like to use my experiences in languages, travel, and cultural/religious sensitivity in an ideal world.  But ultimately I feel that it is important for me to want to feel good at the end of the day of work, knowing my labours and activities have made a positive difference in at least one person's life.  Furthermore, I believe that helping others is motivational, working in this niche has always inspired me and given me encouragement and passion when getting up in the morning. 

But my social life outside of work right now is disappointing.  I partake in the teamwork and the niceties of my colleagues at work, but I know that they don't believe nor want the same things out of life that I do.  There is nothing wrong with their goals and aspirations, but I wonder how I can live and work in a social community in which I struggle to find common ground.  What is important and meaningful for an individual has the potential to move mountains, and ideally if I can work with others who share the same passions, that fervour can aid me in feeling as though I am working for something bigger than myself.

I'm positive now that I want to be back home, around my family and friends, but I have no regrets.  I've currently been looking at Catholic Charities in both Dallas and Ft. Worth, talking with both offices about volunteer opportunities to get a foot in the door, but this doesn't pay the bills.  I'm willing to get a hold of something temporarily to make ends meet and pay my student loans while I spend my spare-time wisely in working towards my career goals.  I would say the same situation is plausible here in DC, but I'd rather be around people who love me back home in the meantime.