How It Started; How It's Going
A different take on a familiar idea (reposting from 2022)
A writer I follow posted a photo this week of her younger self, at a time in her life when she had expectations and dreams that in no way predicted the reality of where she is today (which is pretty successful, something she didn’t see coming). She challenged her readers to do the same kind of self-assessment with a photo from their past, along the lines of those “how it started, how it’s going” photos on Instagram, but with more of a “where I’m from, where I’m going” feel.
Her photo was of herself at 20 as a single mom to a toddler. At 20, I was a mess. I can’t imagine having a toddler at that age. It was hard enough at 32. I don’t have a lot of photos of myself at 20, so I chose one from when I was 30, with a week-old baby in my lap.
I know that not every woman defines herself by motherhood, and I don’t think I do, but it was certainly a turning point. There was a line of demarcation, with life before children and life after. Life before was mostly easy, free of worry about caring for anyone but myself and my own needs, when time was spent with friends, going to movies or concerts, reading, thinking, and being young.
Life after children was like being on a bullet train, speeding past buildings and trees in a blur, while inside everything is moving at a snail’s pace. It seemed I’d never get enough sleep, breastfeeding would never stop hurting, and I’d never have time for friends again. Then all of a sudden there were birthday parties to attend, soccer games, homework, trips to the ER, Harry Potter books to read, massive amounts of laundry, and late nights sewing Halloween costumes by hand. Then came divorce, and things really got busy.
That comparison seemed a bit superficial to me, so I kept looking for a photo that would better describe my “where I’m from, where I’m going” story. I am not in this second photo. It’s a picture of my mother as a young teenager, surrounded by her immediate family, sitting on the front porch of their home on a hot day. It’s a portrait of poverty. Based on how old my mom looks here, I’m guessing this was immediately post-war, so the housing boom that would support their family’s contracting and home building business and bring them some hints of middle class ease had not yet begun.
They had survived the depression. My mother had lots of stories about walking home for lunch, which was biscuits and gravy, getting one new pair of shoes a year, for school, but going barefoot in the summer, and depending on bags of groceries that my grandfather received for his services as a part-time preacher on the weekends. She had wanted to be an artist but instead dropped out of high school as soon as she could because she only had two dresses to wear and felt ashamed.
My grandmother is also in the photo. She lived on a self-sustaining farm for the first 20 years of her life and had no idea there was a global depression or even what that meant until she left the farm, married my grandfather, and moved into town. She had five babies in 10 years, canned home-grown vegetables for the winter, and worked in the cotton fields in the heat of the summer, with the most recent baby on her back or nearby so she could nurse. In later years, she worked in the local shoe factory.
Their story is my before story. I had no reason to believe, growing up and hearing all these stories, that mine would be different. I read “The Realms of Gold” by Margaret Drabble in college, and there’s a scene where the narrator looks out at a cityscape (IIRC) and has a momentary vision of what had existed in that space centuries before - an image of people clearing the land of trees and rocks to build farms, to build a “realm” for their descendants. I think of that scene whenever I remember how hard my grandmother’s and mother’s lives were. They made it possible for me to go to college and “make a life that’s pretty hard to take it in” (Paul McCartney). Not that I’ll ever be a rock star, but neither will I ever have to pick cotton with a baby on my back.
That is where I’m from. What's your story?
Wishing you all a warm holiday season full of savory scents, lively discussions, and loving hugs. Happy Thanksgiving.
Beth
