Homestead mailing list

[sjc <indexer AT fairpoint.net>]

Lisa K.V. Perry wrote:
> Fast forward two years. I saw the same people just last week. It was a much
> different and somewhat subdued gathering. We all tip-toed around the economy
> and the election. This experience has been eye opening to me on many levels.
> I need to learn to trust and believe in myself. I am brighter than I thought
> I was and will no longer think my brother knows it all.
>   
I've been watching this whole thing unfold, Lisa, and several times been 
struck by the similarities to my situation.  I've always been the 
'crazy' among my birth siblings, and they weren't sky about stating 
their opinions.  Rarely have they deemed it worthwhile to visit me; the 
accommodations are lacking, services are lacking, they I'm sure, could 
go on for a long time.  Only one of them can even see the peace & quiet, 
the ability to be self-reliant to a great degree, clean, decent, 
reliable food supplies, and all the other things that have to me a 
higher value than to them, obviously.  Always I have been the butt of 
jokes, some of which would be actually cruel if I weren't so dense as 
not to 'get' it :-) .  They had prettier (true), smarter (debatable), 
blah, bhah, kids, who would go out into the world to do great things; in 
the meantime said kids were educated solely by the school system, mostly 
public, occasionally private.  And so it went for many years.  It was 
clear to me that they considered themselves successes and if I wasn't 
already a failure, I was about to fall in a hole any minute.

I'm a ways from where they are (no accident) and so haven't had all that 
much contact.  I was busy, there were kids to work with, chores to do, 
didn't take too long till these guys just sort of receded to fleeting 
thoughts.  As the last of my kids went out the door permanently I 
contacted the brothers more often, with little reciprocal contact, but I 
just sort of put things on a 'schedule' and eventually they began to 
soften a bit (for one thing, more manipulatable family members died, 
thereby reducing the numbers to the crazy sister). There were a few 
visits, and you haven't lived until you see someone who spent 46 years 
in a govt job we've all heard of, 21 years at the helm of it, 
"providing" press conferences, hobnobbing with those who can't chose 
their own clothing in the morning (he views this as a positive, or did, 
anyway) tiptoe around a splop of chicken poop.  Actually, that vision is 
firmly lodged in my head, and comes to me at the most inopportune 
moments, causing me to smile at DMV clerks, even...... 

By a few years ago, maybe 3-4, I began to wonder how such totally 
inexperienced, unwilling, people would even survive in a crash; money's 
the only answer to a situation.  Carefully, I broached their wives 
(totally clueless and no clue what to think about me, but both the kind 
of people to put nose to grindstone if need be) with the idea that I 
didn't think things "will always be so good financially" and pointed out 
that I would be keeping the Maine place or replacing it with another at 
least nominally agricultual piece of land "for all of US".  Blank looks, 
in both cases, some extra explanations, parroting of their husbands' 
words, not much else said.  But this past fall I started getting more 
interest......now I notice, no one's laughing anymore.  I'm not waiting 
(or wanting) for them to say 'you may have had a point' but the 
harder-nosed one of them said to me in a phone call last week, during a 
conversation about selling his house (mansion, hideous, hard, cold even 
in FL, inside three nested security gates, every item dictated by a HOA) 
"It seems like nobody wants a house with high ceilings" (main ceilings 
are 27', bathrooms and spa only about 14-16'). 

So, no matter how they blind themselves, whether through ignorance or 
deliberate refusal to look at facts they find unacceptable, it's really 
a hard fall for folks like that.

Nobody's asking for help, and indeed, they may never.  But I see them 
gradually letting in information bit-by-bit, so eventually it will 
actually sink in. 
Boggles the brain how perfectly intelligent people (at least one is a 
lot smarter than I, speaks/translates/interrogates in 11 languages plus 
many dialects in some of those!) can walk around with closed eyes is 
beyond the ken of this old slow woman with her goats. 

Your sister's situation is even a bit sadder in that she got hit before 
she saw it coming.  And your subdued Thanksgiving may be as near as 
anyone comes to saying that you were right, but they have to know it 
whether or not they own up to that.  It's just going to be really hard 
for them to say.....and you have it clearly in your head to trust 
yourself and your knowledge and abitilites, so just hang in there, be 
available, they'll come when and if they're ready, Lisa.  then you can 
worry about the next step!!

SJ