are putting too much pressure on everything. Maybe…maybe don't worry so hard about it. You're still young, adventure for a while, see the world. It's much more fun than your laser focus on finding the one true thing you think you should be doing."
I hated that response. I hated it in high school when everyone around me seemed to have a firm idea and path they wanted to walk down. They all had things they'd dreamed of doing their entire lives. Teachers, doctors, firemen, lawyers. Everyone but me had dreams and aspirations. Goals they were reaching for, not just stumbling around hoping to find something to do that didn’t suck too much.
There were two things I discovered that I enjoyed in my misspent youth: rebuilding engines and painting. I had no strong desire or drive to make those my life's work, but I figured if I was going to be a shiftless artist, I should also have some really practical skills to pay my bills. And good mechanics always had work.
So I took shop classes. I admit, I was hoping my hippy-dippy mom would flip out a little, tell me I was going to waste my life, that I should just do…something else. Because then I would have some guidance.
However, instead of the hoped-for reaction, my mother just gave me a hug and said it was good to be grounded before you figured out which stars you wanted to reach for. Which, of course, triggered the biggest fight we ever had.
I was a pretty bratty teenager, so I rolled my eyes at my mom. I was just so damn frustrated and wanted to needle her. But I also really wanted to know something about her past, so I asked what my father had done for a living.
Whoooooo, boy! I’d thought it might give me another thing to explore, a possible thing I was meant to do. As soon as the words came out of my mouth, though, I knew she was pissed. But her mouth just got really tight and she ignored me in favor of chopping a cucumber.
And for the very first time, I got mad about my mother's avoidance of anything about my father and pushed back against Mom's wall of silence. It wasn’t fair that she kept everything about him from me. I only wanted a little information.
I grabbed the cucumber out of her hands and said, "Look, I'm not asking you who he is — it's obvious he isn't interested in being around — but it's not all that strange for me to want the vaguest of details about him or his family. All I want to know is what his freaking job was. I'm trying to figure out who I am, and he's half of me."
My gentle, hippie mother threw the knife down on the counter in disgust and said, "He had no part in raising you! You don't have to let him influence you. You can be anything you want, without any pressure from anyone!"
I waved the cucumber in her face. "That isn't the point, I just want to know something about who he was!"
"I don't have anything to tell you!"
I threw down the cucumber and snarled, "Yeah, sure. Was he some one-night stand and you don't know his name?"
Mom's mouth puckered into a tight ring and clipped words slipped out of her barely moving lips. "He's just not from around here and I don't know what he really did.”
The room’s temperature shot up about a thousand degrees and we started shouting at each other.
“It’s not fair,” I screamed. “You’re wrong to keep it from me. I’m half him.”
She scooped the cucumber off the floor and threw it in the trash with a thud. “And half me. It doesn’t matter what he is or did. He’s gone.”
“He left you, not me. Does he even know I exist? Or am I a dirty little secret you whisked away?”
She jerked away from me and I could see her eyes glisten with tears. I felt like a total asshole. She just stood there a moment before she finally spoke, so quietly I almost couldn’t hear her. “Regardless of what you want to know, talking to me like that is unacceptable. Please go to your room."
I slunk away to my bedroom to think. My
I hated that response. I hated it in high school when everyone around me seemed to have a firm idea and path they wanted to walk down. They all had things they'd dreamed of doing their entire lives. Teachers, doctors, firemen, lawyers. Everyone but me had dreams and aspirations. Goals they were reaching for, not just stumbling around hoping to find something to do that didn’t suck too much.
There were two things I discovered that I enjoyed in my misspent youth: rebuilding engines and painting. I had no strong desire or drive to make those my life's work, but I figured if I was going to be a shiftless artist, I should also have some really practical skills to pay my bills. And good mechanics always had work.
So I took shop classes. I admit, I was hoping my hippy-dippy mom would flip out a little, tell me I was going to waste my life, that I should just do…something else. Because then I would have some guidance.
However, instead of the hoped-for reaction, my mother just gave me a hug and said it was good to be grounded before you figured out which stars you wanted to reach for. Which, of course, triggered the biggest fight we ever had.
I was a pretty bratty teenager, so I rolled my eyes at my mom. I was just so damn frustrated and wanted to needle her. But I also really wanted to know something about her past, so I asked what my father had done for a living.
Whoooooo, boy! I’d thought it might give me another thing to explore, a possible thing I was meant to do. As soon as the words came out of my mouth, though, I knew she was pissed. But her mouth just got really tight and she ignored me in favor of chopping a cucumber.
And for the very first time, I got mad about my mother's avoidance of anything about my father and pushed back against Mom's wall of silence. It wasn’t fair that she kept everything about him from me. I only wanted a little information.
I grabbed the cucumber out of her hands and said, "Look, I'm not asking you who he is — it's obvious he isn't interested in being around — but it's not all that strange for me to want the vaguest of details about him or his family. All I want to know is what his freaking job was. I'm trying to figure out who I am, and he's half of me."
My gentle, hippie mother threw the knife down on the counter in disgust and said, "He had no part in raising you! You don't have to let him influence you. You can be anything you want, without any pressure from anyone!"
I waved the cucumber in her face. "That isn't the point, I just want to know something about who he was!"
"I don't have anything to tell you!"
I threw down the cucumber and snarled, "Yeah, sure. Was he some one-night stand and you don't know his name?"
Mom's mouth puckered into a tight ring and clipped words slipped out of her barely moving lips. "He's just not from around here and I don't know what he really did.”
The room’s temperature shot up about a thousand degrees and we started shouting at each other.
“It’s not fair,” I screamed. “You’re wrong to keep it from me. I’m half him.”
She scooped the cucumber off the floor and threw it in the trash with a thud. “And half me. It doesn’t matter what he is or did. He’s gone.”
“He left you, not me. Does he even know I exist? Or am I a dirty little secret you whisked away?”
She jerked away from me and I could see her eyes glisten with tears. I felt like a total asshole. She just stood there a moment before she finally spoke, so quietly I almost couldn’t hear her. “Regardless of what you want to know, talking to me like that is unacceptable. Please go to your room."
I slunk away to my bedroom to think. My
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