Bush Baby

This'll tell you a bit about me out here in the American Outback.

I was raised by a rebel turned Viet Nam vet turned Taoist dad and a proud Canadian mom. Tunes in my childhood house included (heavily) Frank Zappa, Bob Dylan, Mozart and Captain Beefheart. Dad fell in love with Nirvana before the rest of the world. We had a television, a black and white little thing, but we only watched PBS but even that was not often.

Mostly, I couldn't be kept inside. I disappeared into the Russian olive trees and acres of cattails, sandstone fast being carved by excess irrigation runoff from the alfalfa fields on the lane above. I followed deer trails and dog paths through the cool shadows of the property. From the highway to the river was once my grandfather's farm. He sold all but the 46-acre chunk of Wild that rubs its back against the water. He sold it in one piece, with a promise from the man who purchased it that he would not subdivide. My grandfather came from Utah, a faithful and decent Mormon in a promising new area, and he still believed in promises.

The property was immediately subdivided. This was never forgotten -- that hurt and new mistrust regarding ownership of land versus stewardship of land became strongly embedded in the framework of both my own and my father's growing up. We were the guardians of an unintentional, artificial wetlands that occupied about 70 percent of "our" land. The remainder of the property was short, hardy tufts of grass, massively old, dwarfed sagebrush, dusty rises and prickly pear cactus. My home turf, where I spent a huge amount of time, was a land divided in all sorts of visually and metaphorically poetic ways (all of which I'm saving for that book I have written and am editing).

I spent as much time as I could alone. So many reasons; most at the time were too big to be comprehended but certainly had meteoric impact on me as a girl. For one, I was extremely sun sensitive. I didn't have the luxury ability of getting sunburns. All I got was nauseated, blistering rashes, and a light head. Once this happened in a new summer, I spent the rest of the season covering up because each minute in the sun after that was an exercise in exponential growth of allergic reactions. I was a pale little girl with long sleeves in the scorching heat, sometimes gloves (try that in grade school... it's not pretty), a so-often sunburned scalp that I wouldn't let my hair be brushed every day... Yeah. I call that my defining handicap as a kid.

Religion. We didn't have one, except for a near-spiritual reverence for the natural world. That wasn't an inclusive way-to-be in our circle. That's all I will say about that.

My parents didn't let me go out to play with friends much. I bet I didn't ask much, either, but I don't recall. I felt like an odd one out whenever I did attend a birthday party, but I mostly managed to fade into walls and hurt privately. I learned the hurting part early. Common story, but not something I share freely. I'm sure it's true of most people, but I learned and earned my ability to not talk.

My parents taught me to be thoughtful, polite, field expedient, kind and compassionate. I'm sure I'm biologically wired that way, and they did me a great service by encouraging those traits and giving me directions along the path. Because of my parents' experiences with things outside our little town, I knew of other places and other ways of surviving, thinking, behaving.

Mom brought the Canadian  influence, basically a British culture but nicely mellowed by facing brutally harsh winters that forced people to live with less privacy. I asked her for a million memories and stories and feelings about that place I always thought of as home. We left there when I was three and a half and I remember the scent, the feel of the air, the influence of water, the trees (ohgod, the beautiful trees). I've wondered why such a short time of my life has such a dominant influence on me. All I can come up with is that we were isolated politically, culturally and physically out there on our land and that I was the kid who learned to read at 4 years old in two weeks. Unique kid, unique situation, unique placement.

Dad gave me anthropology, sociology, philosophy. Because of his happiness in teaching me all he knew of the world, I'd build Aztec temples in the dirt outside our house. These tiny worlds had sacrificial pits and ceremonial tables, things I came to understand from an academic perspective before I ever knew what it was to suffer and bleed mortally.

But really, who wants to play with that little girl? I would. When I meet kids that remind me of myself in vulnerability, I go out of my way to give them a little joy about being themselves. I look forward to being an age where no one is frightened that I might be a threat. I'll be a great little old lady (with cats) who hands apples over the fence to the kids and their parents won't be afraid. For now, though, we're in a time where women are frightened again (still), where people see too many instances of harm and become hyper-vigilant, where anyone who loves kids and hasn't got a similarly aged one at their side might be a monster.

I grew up to be liberal and apologetic. Life had dealt me some serious blows in my kiddohood, so I knew empathy and sympathy equally. I was trained in diplomacy. The only dirty word in our house was "kill."

I finally figured out, much later and only for the most part, that the apologetic aspect had to go in order for my gentle heart to survive. That part took an actual heart breaking, a physical heart attack to accompany tremendous, long term grief, for me to figure out that I had to become harder in order to survive. I hate that sometimes.

So, (meanwhile, back on the homestead) while the rest of the American Outback thought about and acted on a pretty conservative set of values, I was happily listening to folk, funk, freak and punk music, learning what I now know is called The Liberal Agenda (insert wicked smirk and amused eyebrow facial expression here), and understanding that my little town is just one little town on a very big planet. Not much room for narrow thinking when I knew about Ethiopia, the Viet Nam War and the half-dead men who still live, two functioning types of government, parts of multiple languages, everything PBS played in the 80's, farm life, Mayans and mushrooms (only in theory. no, my parents did not feed us 'shrooms or any other drugs). Too independent to live as hippies in a commune, too academic to merge into the early biker scene, my family maintained a separate state of peace and progressive thinking. I have great parents.

Those are some of the bigger building blocks. I'm from pioneer stock and washerwoman blood with a few gypsy-hearted, whimsical poets. It was bound to be an interesting life with that sort of combination. And all that... was just in my backyard.