2015.5

Things that Come and Go

Things get lost.
While browsing Thriftbooks (for a book in the exponentially different genre of engineering), I came across The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, a book I had presented to the kids years ago as recommended by one of my favorite sources for new and unusual books. I think it was Chinaberry books; it’s hard to recall. Remembering where the book may have gotten to would be even harder still. I do miss pouring over the catalog for new voices and points of view to share with them. It was a special privilege that I didn’t take lightly. And I find myself subconsciously doing it still.
Things get forgotten.
I was reminded suddenly of young Emily’s ferocious consternation at the liberal sprinkling of “the F word” throughout. Emily is our oldest and always had a strong sense of – well, just about everything. She took it upon herself to “edit” the book by typing up a page of replacements on the computer that she sized and resized until it matched the correct font style and size and then painstakingly cut out and glued each over every occurrence of the offending expletives that went beyond words that start with F. It’s more than a bit ironic that, contrary to the usual voids left by editing and censoring, these additions thickened that book to where it never could close properly again. It was just a slender little work and was probably the reason why she bothered at all. She might have ceremoniously burned anything larger. The labor she invested was not just for her own sense of propriety but also to preserve the story that she, too, wanted to share with her younger siblings, who now drop “the F word” with alarming regularity. Are they equally thoughtful enough to edit themselves around their nephew by her? But then would they then be less themselves or more than themselves?
Things get renamed.
If one must speak more than one language or has more than one persona, as the Japanese honne and tatemae, are they diminished or expanded? Are they “passing” or are they adapting? Remember Ma admonishing Laura to keep her bonnet on and face shaded so she didn’t get tanned and mistook for “an Injun”? The reverse was clearly the preference back then and all the way up to my great grandma’s day.
“And the sign said, ‘Long-haired freaky people need not apply’. So, I tucked my hair up under my hat and”, to be fair, had no intention of applying.
“Code switch” or curiosity? He just went in to ask him why. Can we be curious or considerate without affront? Can we adopt with appreciation and wonder without accusations of appropriation?
So, if we lose, forget and even rename ourselves in the quest to belong is it a gain or a loss? Is it a fair trade? Cost of admittance to the sisterhood or a brotherhood are often the very defining qualities of that individual.