Courtesy of wikipedia.com
Though some politicians would have us think otherwise, deprivation, not immigration, is the well-spring for much of our country’s social ills. Poverty breeds crime, not being foreign-born. What’s more pointing fingers at scapegoats doesn’t address the disparity.
Recently, I wrote about my penurious childhood, raised by an immigrant mother who worked two jobs yet was never sure she could put food on the table. The experience left pockmarks in my psyche, but I am not alone. The habits of the poor stay with us even if we are lucky enough to escape indigence.
Food insecurity is a common anxiety. I admit, I am guilty. Not satisfied with a couple of boxes of oatmeal, I buy 50 pounds at a time. If my bread turns moldy, I cut out the spots and toast the rest. A tube of toothpaste gets squeezed flat as an ironing board before ‘I’ll throw it away. And, in my cupboard are rows of empty jam jars in case I run out of containers.
“Always buy the best you can afford,” I recall my father once saying. It’s good advice. A stout pair of shoes can last for a decade or more. Cheap ones last for maybe a year if you insert a square of cardboard over the hole in the sole. People don’t realize buying cheap is expensive. Cheap always falls apart. As a teenager, I bought a clunker off a car lot. Most of the time I walked to school because I couldn’t afford the constant repairs.
The experiences that shape us derive from where fate dumps us in the river of time. I belong to the Silent Generation, children born at the tail end of the Depression, youngsters who endured food rationing during World War II and kept our mouths shut because McCarthyism made us wary of our neighbors.
Members of other generations see the world differently. A writer on my Facebook page, a member of GenX, advised folks to write short books. Most readers she said were skimmers and scanners. They gather the key insights and move on, uninterested in the fluff and filler.
I replied to her comment, “How sad.” She wondered, “Why sad?”
I found it hard to explain without seeming judgemental. Nonetheless, I thought my young friend had failed to consider that the journey was as important as the destination. Good writing does more than deliver information. It entertains and illuminates. Imagine applying her measuring stick to music. Without the fluff and filler, all we’d have to anticipate is a composition’s final crescendo.
Like music, language is lyrical. Take, for example, a line from D. H. Lawrence’s poem, The Mountain Lion. It is a long, long slim cat, yellow like a lioness. Dead. The fact of the poem is simple. A hunter has killed a beautiful animal.
But for Lawrence, the fact is not enough. The poet strings words across his page, a series of soft letters, “l,” “m,” and “y, lengthening and repeating them to provide a tactile sense of time’s flow. Arriving at the double “d” of dead, the reader experiences a shock, a break as palpable as a rifle’s crack. We feel as well as know the force of death’s presence. To command all the powers of language, its sounds and rhythms as well as its meaning is what writers should strive for. That is art
My opinion is no truer than that of my GenX friend, of course. She understands the times in a way I cannot. I am a member of the Silent Generation, which is why, to answer her question, “Why sad?” I wrote: “Being much younger, you accept reality while I mourn.”
