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cosmolinguist"Well, we're going to be selling some of our land," Mom said.
Just casually, over lunch, in the middle of a conversation about the moisture that collects around the windows in our house.
It wasn't me she was telling; I found out only because I happened to be there when she was telling her best friend. Not that I mind terribly—Mom's found out one or two rather big things in my life because I was telling one of her friends. Communication is difficult for my family.
I was sad even before I was surprised. Sad because my dad feels very attached to the land and the farming, even though it sucks as a lifestyle these days and he has to work another job. Surprised because I my dad feels very attached... oh, wait, it's the same reason. But the sad definitely came first.
The surprise was easily dealt with: Mom explained that Dad had been intending to keep everything so that it could be split evenly between Chris and me some day. (The sad kicked up a notch or three here.) Now that that's not an issue, they've been talking about selling half their farmland. "It would mean we could get out of some of our debt," Mom said, "and we could help Holly and Andrew out, we could fix up the house when it needs it..."
I'm all kinds of attached to our little patches of dirt, but I'm also the first to be happy at the thought of my parents not having such crushing debts. Things weren't too bad before my dad first lost his job, when I was ten or eleven, but that means that for almost as long as I've been aware of such things, my parents have had to worry about money. Sometimes a little, sometimes a lot.* Always something. It would be so awesome if they didn't have to live like that any more. Not that the sale of a hundred acres will clear their debts, by any means, but it'll sure help.
Stlll. Weird to think that we'd no longer have the land across the road, which we still call "Freddy's" even though my grandpa's brother Freddy died a decade or so ago. Weird to think that the hill where my dad grew up will belong to someone else. Most of the buildings were flattened in the tornado of '67; the house was still standing but unsound. The next summer he came home from college and helped build the house we live in now, just down the road.
* This is actually one of the "a lot" times. How awful is it that, a day or two after burying your child, you then have to sort out his credit cards, his car and student loans, knowing that you may be responsible for tens of thousands of dollars of his debt? Some of this has been resolved, and mostly favorably so far, but they still don't know about the car.
Just casually, over lunch, in the middle of a conversation about the moisture that collects around the windows in our house.
It wasn't me she was telling; I found out only because I happened to be there when she was telling her best friend. Not that I mind terribly—Mom's found out one or two rather big things in my life because I was telling one of her friends. Communication is difficult for my family.
I was sad even before I was surprised. Sad because my dad feels very attached to the land and the farming, even though it sucks as a lifestyle these days and he has to work another job. Surprised because I my dad feels very attached... oh, wait, it's the same reason. But the sad definitely came first.
The surprise was easily dealt with: Mom explained that Dad had been intending to keep everything so that it could be split evenly between Chris and me some day. (The sad kicked up a notch or three here.) Now that that's not an issue, they've been talking about selling half their farmland. "It would mean we could get out of some of our debt," Mom said, "and we could help Holly and Andrew out, we could fix up the house when it needs it..."
I'm all kinds of attached to our little patches of dirt, but I'm also the first to be happy at the thought of my parents not having such crushing debts. Things weren't too bad before my dad first lost his job, when I was ten or eleven, but that means that for almost as long as I've been aware of such things, my parents have had to worry about money. Sometimes a little, sometimes a lot.* Always something. It would be so awesome if they didn't have to live like that any more. Not that the sale of a hundred acres will clear their debts, by any means, but it'll sure help.
Stlll. Weird to think that we'd no longer have the land across the road, which we still call "Freddy's" even though my grandpa's brother Freddy died a decade or so ago. Weird to think that the hill where my dad grew up will belong to someone else. Most of the buildings were flattened in the tornado of '67; the house was still standing but unsound. The next summer he came home from college and helped build the house we live in now, just down the road.
* This is actually one of the "a lot" times. How awful is it that, a day or two after burying your child, you then have to sort out his credit cards, his car and student loans, knowing that you may be responsible for tens of thousands of dollars of his debt? Some of this has been resolved, and mostly favorably so far, but they still don't know about the car.
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(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-06 05:21 am (UTC)I can understand the attachment, even though I've never owned that kind of land. My family and I moved out of the apartment I spent most of my life in, to go live an hour away in the high deserts of Southern California. That was two years ago, but whenever I dream about going home, it's always that old apartment that I see in the horizon.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-06 05:36 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-06 05:49 am (UTC)As for the other entry, my dad seems to be the same way. He can't afford that kind of land to farm on, and he wouldn't know how to, anyway. Our backyard is pretty large, though, and he's turned that into a mini-field, or uber-garden, depending on how you want to look at it. I don't get his obsession with it, since it's backbreaking work and geez, we live in the desert now. It gets pretty hot. But he seems to derive a lot of satisfaction of getting something straight from the land--like what comes out is more pure (and I'm sure it is). Maybe it's because it gives him a sense of power and control that he can't get outside in the big city.