It's been a demanding month and I've been unable to spend any time blogging, but hopefully I'll be able to make at least a couple of posts this month. There are so many issues and events dominating my consciousness that it will be hard to pick only a few to write about. Increasingly though, I'm deeply concerned about the planet's future and about the ability of the generation I helped raise to adapt quickly enough to what's ahead. More on that in the coming weeks.
As I sit here this morning, looking out the window at the budding trees and the welcome sunshine, memories sweep over me. They are the memories of a childhood and adolescence that I have been trying to forget or at least overcome for the last 40+ years. Growing your own food; using rain water from a cistern to wash clothes and hair; hanging clothes outdoors (or in the basement in winter) because the clothes dryer was the sun and air; walking to schools and stores or taking the bus because we couldn't afford a car, and when we did get one, only one person could even drive; making bed linens attractive with needlework; canning summer vegetables and making pickles and jam; cutting the grass with a reel mower; pulling all the shades and curtains in the summer to cool the house in the age of no air conditioning. All of these things are the memories of a more self-sufficient time, a time when things were 'local', smaller, more manageable, less dependent on fossil fuel ...but also more labor intensive. And for me, these are the memories of a family who was barely middle-class, one generation off the farm, poorly educated, surviving on the edge -- a world I wanted to leave behind as quickly as possible.
It's the 21st century now, more than 50 years later. Those memories suddenly feel like gems that were given to me long ago, now in my memory vault but still easily accessible with the right code, making it possible to take them out, buff them up, and appreciate their beauty and utility. For unlike my children, I know how to live more simply, though I have chosen not to. Like most Americans, I've been swept up in consumption, in buying stuff, in trying to become part of the 'American Dream'. Am I happier with all my stuff? That's debatable. Bill McKibben's book, Deep Economy, suggests I'm not ...that few of us are. We work harder than ever, mostly to pay for more stuff we could live without. The work we are trying not to do -- household work, subsistence tasks -- was in some ways more satisfying than working to pay Bank of America for the privilege of filling our homes and freezers with goods crafted by people on the far side of the world.
Not to be delusional ...there was a downside to the past that can't be dismissed. There was little 'free time', limited food choices, it took all day to wash a week's clothes and the whole next day to iron them. Women stayed home and worked from sun up to sun down to feed their families and just maintain the family home. There were no luxuries. None. We could not afford books -- it was the library or nothing -- though we had a bookmobile that would bring them to your neighborhood on request each week. Movies were a rarity. Summer heat could be murderous. Diversity -- in food, people, ideas -- was non-existent. We lived insular, often bigoted lives.
Yet, those days also brought many rewards that are often missing today: a sense of accomplishment, of connecting to the world more directly, of knowing the shopkeepers, farmers, butchers, and your neighbors more intimately than we do now. We walked more (and were thinner!) because essential services were closer and walking was what you did to get around. Everyone had a garden; I still remember helping plant seeds in spring and the joy of seeing them grow into food we could eat, some of which were foods we only had in summer -- tomatoes, leaf lettuce, fresh green beans, sweet scallions, cucumbers and peppers. The taste of sun ripened red raspberries was one I lived for each year. I knew they would soon turn into glistening jars of my grandmother's jam. I vividly recall the section of her basement where all the beautiful jars of vegetables, pickles and jams were stored and the root cellar where she kept potatoes and onions harvested that year.
We didn't have farmer's markets. We had road-side stands. Sundays were the day for a ride in the 'country'. We could buy from local farmers advertising their weekly harvest or just watch the animals grazing in their pastures. My grandmother would sit at my side and identify the different breeds of cows and the strengths they each had, important information she thought a little girl should master.
In a curious twist, those memories are now a resource for re-learning how to live more self-sufficiently. I feel certain that we are going to need to master these fundamental life skills again. The earth cannot sustain our pillage much longer. Living locally means learning to do for ourselves much more. I wonder, will we begin to value the earth more if we connect intimately to it as the source for individual sustenance? There is enough time in our days to care for ourselves more sustainably if we forgo some of the other things that soak up our time -- like cable TV. We have exchanged doing things for watching others do things instead. We watch cooking shows rather than cook. We watch Jamie grow his own food rather than growing our own.
My kids make fun of me because over the last few years, I've begun to wait to turn on my a/c until I can endure the heat no longer. I've gone back to pulling the shades and waiting to open the windows until nightfall. When it's hot, I try to make food that doesn't require heating up the house ...these are things we all did when I was a child. We survived quite well using these strategies to cope with nature. But my children have never lived without 24/7/365 climate control. Suddenly, those years of 'deprivation' I've been running from, feel like a treasure to return to. As I reach my 60th birthday, I realize that I can reclaim the past in a positive way, teach my children and grandchildren how to live well with less. I can prepare them for a future that is not likely to look like today but may more closely resemble the past I come from. This is not the impact I expected to have, the possibility of being a resource and a memory bank for living in a simpler time. Life takes interesting turns. I'm getting ready for the ones ahead. Are you?
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