"Educated" by Tara Westover

Words couldn't describe it, but she did. Her life, her experience, her feelings, her evolution, her pain; they were mine, too, their memories trapped in an obscured cage of my own making.

I don't know how to explain this resonance. I don't know how to explain why I spent hours on the verge of tears, nearly overwhelmed that someone else's existence, while different in many ways, could mirror mine in such an uncanny way. Tara Westover was an alternate doppelganger of my growing up; her memoir stirred countless visions of the battles I now relive only in smoky recollections as my mind gazes at the bleached bones of my formative years.

I wanted to gush to my siblings about this book. I wanted to demand they read it, corroborate the similarities, to validate me somehow. But it will not be; my own brother wrote an autobiography, one which he has repeatedly asked me to read, but which I cannot. He even sent me my own copy so that I wouldn't have to be troubled by the meager cost of purchasing it online. I haven't figured out why I've been unable to bring myself to read it; maybe because I don't want to soil my fragile memories with the perspective of another sibling, for fear that I will forget how it was for me, that I will rationalize away years of my own biased knowledge, only to be replaced with an alternate history that belonged to my brother.

I won't take the time today to describe the similarities; this would take me too long. Perhaps I'll have to buy a copy of the book and annotate in the margins where I identify aspects of my life.

Regardless, the book ends with her still in the midst of a struggle between her identity and her aspirations of identity. I wonder how hers will play out, as much as I wonder the same for myself. Here's to the years ahead.

Wrenching Maturity

              Sometimes I can’t tell if the ache inside me is purely nostalgia or if it’s an actual physical condition. It’s that moment when you look at your child and, instead of seeing just his limber frame buzzing by within his world of play, you feel the pang of a thousand missed moments lost in the swirl of time, swallowed by your job or other necessities of life that drag you away every day.

                I feel that about my faith, as well. I yearn to return to my simpler view, to a time when I could look you in the eye and make a statement of certainty unclouded by the thick lens of changed perspective and experience. The truth is, I’ve lost that piece of me somewhere; I don’t know if it leaked out in hospital halls that still echo in my mind with myriad scenarios of loss, anger, relief, and life, or if I’ve whittled away memories one flake at a time, until all that’s left is a lumpy mass of something, beautiful, even artistic, but much more abstract.

                And yet, I still feel hope. I still feel peace when I seek out God in my life. Prayer brings my intangible soul a little closer to its roots, though the words still seem to fall into the emptiness of space. I crave the occasion to make a difference, to help someone feel that they don’t have to close themselves up. I find myself with aspirations to obey God more, to do whatever is closest to the right thing.

                So is my testimony lost? Is it muddled? Or is this feeling just the part where I no longer float in the lazy river between youthfulness and age, but instead recognize that I can swim upstream, downstream, or even stop off at the bank and experience more than the view from the center?

An Emotional Man

So, I like art. I like dance. I like music. And when I see those things, I think about how terrific it would be if my own kids would end up being musical or athletic prodigies; and then I realize that it’s probably too late and I should have enrolled them at age 14 minutes for them to be able to catch up to the amazingly talented young performers of the world.

The problem is that most guys I know don’t appreciate these things (because they’re a bunch of heathens. You can tell them I said that). A musical? Forget it. An amazing dance routine that should bring tears to the eyes of every human being? Totally wasted on these fellows. A vivid paragraph that deftly defines the intricacies of human nature? Wasted ink. Me figure-skating a routine in a tan leotard? Probably worth thousands of dollars a ticket, but they refuse to see the value.

Braeden categorically denied liking a (favorite) song from “The Greatest Showman” to his friend last week, after the other kid had insisted that all musicals were terrible and how he would never watch them. Stephanie and I had a good talk with Braeden afterwards, and told him that he absolutely did NOT have to pretend to have or not have interests simply based on what his friends said. He was convinced, and spent the rest of the day repeatedly listening to the soundtrack. I was proud of him.

For sake of posterity, here are a few quotes from this week:

“Dad, when you were a kid, did they have vacuum cleaners?” -Braeden, after a couple of days of discussing the good ol’ days when we used rotary phones and the internet wasn’t a household thing.

“Does [the road sign] DIP mean Die In Peace?” Braeden, perfectly timed after his grandmother nearly drove us off the road.

“Did you eat your French toast, Eliana?” -Dad

                                “No.” -Eliana

                                “Why?” -Dad

                                “Because I didn’t like it. It was not good. It was not good for me, babies.” -Eliana

“I told you once! Go…to…bed! Cuz you not being nice!” -Eliana, to her mother

“Emergency, emergency! Sawed arm….now add some cream [to the arm]….and sugar.…yum yum yum! You had an emergency. Stay home, and you’ll feel better soon!” -Eliana, playing doctor.

“DADDY IS MY BEST FWEND! DADDY IS MY BEST FWEND!” Sing-song at the top of Eliana’s voice in the grocery store, for the duration of the visit.

On another note, I’m teaching my children well because Eliana came into our room the other day with the statement that she’d been picking her nose and eating it.

By the way, she was doing this thing every morning where she joyously yelled a greeting at the top of her voice approximately 1 second after awakening. There is a 1 in 5 chance that she yells my name. It might be my favorite thing to wake up to, EVER.

So, several months ago, I had this amazing idea about how we should use the extra money earned by my post-hurricane disaster work in Puerto Rico. First, I bought a generator. Then, I built a bathroom.

Well, I didn’t exactly build it. It was already there to begin with; it was just a terrible bathroom. I put on my muscle t-shirt, kissed my walnut biceps, and told myself “Here goes nothing” while sawing into the fiberglass shower enclosure. I tore out the separating wall, re-framed another wall, ripped out the flooring and carpet, relocated the shower plumbing and p-trap, fixed some sub-floor, took out the vanity and toilet, then died of exhaustion.

I revived myself a few weeks later and got to work, this time doing small projects with days lapsing in between, with my virtual tutor (YouTube) coaching my on how I was screwing everything up and needed to re-do it.

And we’re there! Shower is tiled with the enclosure installed, a faux beam has been made, vanity is in place, a new porcelain throne has water in it but not around it, pipe shelves groan under the weight of decorative towels, and there are only a couple of areas that Stephanie says look “terrible!” that need to be fixed.