Winter's Hearth

Oh! The neglected blog and the guilt that goes with one. The following passage was started w-a-y back in January. I got stuck with the notion that finishing it would hurt some people who shouldn't. This is the crux of my "writer's block", letting go of making people from the past feel bad. At the end of this post I'll talk more, but for now here's the slightly delayed post.

"Winter is the time for comfort - it is the time for home."
-   Edith Sitwell

Oh, if that were only true. Since Thanksgiving I think we were only home once or twice on weekends. The weekends we were around we were busy doing the normal holiday things that most families do. It's only been the past two weekends that we didn't have much on our plates. So my apologies for being absent these past two(!!!) months.  

The above quotation is true though in the fact that in the winter we seek the comforts of home which I think is why people try so hard to make the holidays like the ones they used to know. Or think they know.  Memory can be a tricky thing and can seem a little rosier over time. Plus most of those memories are from the view of a child when everything is new and magical. 

I think I've stated in previous posts that I don't like nostalgia. I have no use for it. I believe it stems from not having an idyllic childhood (but how many people do?) It would be too easy and futile to list all the ways things went bad for us.  It would be equally futile as well to list all the people who by either being active participants or just by their absence allowed my brothers and I to live in a manner that no one should live in. It would also be easy to live my life dwelling on everything that went wrong with our childhoods and feeding the resentment that would come from all that.  But I choose not to live like that.  There is way too much beauty and love in my life to allow that darkness back.

Every now and then something comes along to remind me of what was and what may have been.  Recently I finished reading a remarkable book by Daniel Woodrell called Winter's Bone. If you get the chance to read it, do so.  It's gritty, horrifying and all too real.  The story takes place in the Ozarks and is told from the point of view of Ree a sixteen year old girl who is put in a major predicament by her father who disappears leaving her to raise two younger brothers and care for her mother ~ a mother whose "...mind broke and the parts scattered and she let them go."  It's a world involving meth cookers, small towns and people who in some way or another are related to each other.  


It stands as a reminder of a world that could have been different for my brothers and myself. That's where the dislike of nostalgia comes into play. I think books, movies, and stories sometimes remind me of just how fine of a tight rope we sometimes walked.  The reading of that book also coincided with the reading of a journal page that my brother gave me, one that he wrote in high school.  Reading it broke my heart imaging the pain and loneliness that he experienced growing up in a house where our mother had checked out years before. My heart ached and I sent a copy of the pages to a friend of mine who told me I was reading the wrong things on them. She said I needed to concentrate more on the comments his teacher had made. A teacher who shared a part of her past to connect with him and to encourage him to do well and prove all the people wrong who said he'd never amount to anything. 

My friend also reminded me that none of us, my brothers nor I, are bound to that place anymore. We have our own families now. She reminded me that I am a husband and a father and that in no shape or fashion am I the same person I was. For a while there, I think I was drawn back down into the past. What I really wanted her to know is that I'm amazed that if it weren't for the caring and support of a few significant people at certain moments in our lives... well I just don't think our lives would have turned out as well as they have.


Now, back to the beginning of this post.  For a while now I've wrestled with the idea of taking this blog anonymous on a different site but decided that would be somewhat dishonest on my part. I don't want to hide behind a shield of anonymity. Doing so would take away a certain responsibility to be honest about what I write.  So I've decided to stay right here in plain sight.  

But at the same time I can't be responsible for what someone may feel from reading my blog. I don't mean that to sound flippant but I can't worry about anyone but three people in my life: myself, my daughter and my partner. That's where my responsibilities lie. And really, if someone feels guilt, sadness, remorse or whatever about what I write, then they need to ask themselves why and what did they do or not do to make themselves feel that way.