The Best Defense is a Good Offense

Sometimes, you defend people because it's right, because they're your friend, and you would do anything for them because you love them. And you would give up something for them, in defense of them, because it's the right thing to do.

But that doesn't mean they will do the same for you.

I said this to my mother last week, over dinner. She was teaching me how to make beef stew and we were catching up, reminiscing, and doing what human beings do over a bowl of food; we were exchanging information.

When I said the above, we were going over something that had happened long in our past, something that doesn't come up very often, but as most of us do, the subject had wandered into this far-afield spot we rarely ever visit. And I said what I said because it was a lesson I finally learned just before my 41st birthday.

There are many milestones that occur in our lives that mark the transition from childhood into adulthood. A good many cultures celebrate these transitions in ceremonies: the quinceañera, a bar mitvah, the Satere-Mawe tribe's manhood initiation of wearing Bullet Ant gloves. But I don't think a specific ceremony cuts it. It's many little moments that happen over the course of a life that add to one's knowledge base of understanding humanity. And when one of these moments happen you think to yourself Oh. So that's how this works. OK. Understood, Universe. You mature, most times against your will, and little bit sad that some of that naivete is now gone. Our world, our reality, is a lot easier to live in when you imagine that the monsters are black-furred, yellow-eyed, and living underneath your bed, much easier when you believe everyone has your best interests at heart, far easier when you feel it in your bones that everyone wants to work toward a greater good, and definitely easier when you imagine that everyone you meet can be your friend.

Unfortunately, humanity doesn't operate like that and those are some hard lessons to learn, far more difficult than calculus. The School of Life has a rather cruel Headmistress and she doesn't really care if a lesson stings.

The lesson I'm speaking of in this blog post started when I was 18. I was lucky in that I was 18 before I learned an adult will just as soon turn on you as nurture you and they will do it for their own ends. When it happened, I was utterly shattered. I was there, I had passed that American cusp of becoming a legal, voting adult, ready to become an adult who would nurture and lead and guide when one of those nurturing, leading guides gave it to me but good. I remember curling up between the wall of my bedroom and my dresser, making myself as small as physically possible, to emulate the size my emotional self felt at that moment, and crying great heaving gulps of tears. I think my mother worried for my sanity.

I eventually got over it, but filed it away as a Lesson titled "Adults Can Totally Break a Kid's Heart." Little did I know that this lesson wasn't over. It wasn't until seven years later that part two was presented on a silver platter by the Universe. This Lesson was titled "Adults Can Totally Break Another Adult's Heart For No Other Reason Than They Are Bitter And Want To Make Everyone Around Them Unhappy As Well." When this lesson was presented to me, I did the only thing I could do, that I knew how to do. I defended the person who was being hurt. I stood up for this person, even giving up something I loved in the process. I spread my feet, hands on hips, and shouted at the top of my lungs, "YOU WILL NOT DO THIS BECAUSE IT IS WRONG! BUT IF YOU CONTINUE ON THIS PATH, YOU WILL DO IT WITHOUT ME AND I WILL TELL EVERYONE EVERYWHERE HOW WRONG YOU ARE!"

And I did it, too. I stepped back from this thing I cherished, loved, adored, all in the name of friendship. I did it knowing deep down that this friend would always have my back as well.

I was wrong.

The third and final part of this Lesson, titled "Adults Who You Have Defended Will Not Always Defend You In Return" was presented in my life class 15 years later, a full 22 years after the first part of the lesson. When it happened, it wasn't explosive or in my face. It was actually rather quiet. No one really noticed it but me. When it happened, when I realized that this person, who I considered to be family, who I stood up for, had never even thought to protect or shield me, I was devastated. I remember again crying as the hurt of 18-year-old me, 22 years prior, welled up to the surface, and I thought...

Life sucks. These lessons suck. I hate this shit. I hate this School of Life. I'm done.

Except I wasn't done. Being truly "done" meant shuffling off this mortal coil and I certainly wasn't going to hasten that. I decided after having my cry that "done" in this context meant turning off my phone and computer, eating chocolate, and watching as much Top Gear as humanly possible.

And when I finally stepped back, I realized that all things happen for a reason. They are all learning moments, teaching moments, moments that get us through this ridiculous traffic jam of life and give us example moments for our kids so they're at least prepared for their moment when an adult breaks their heart during their childhood, during their adulthood, and when a friend stops being a friend and becomes just another person in humanity's crowd.

When I uttered those words, at the top of this post, to my mother, it was the culmination of a lesson I never wanted to learn, but ultimately had to. I had to learn this so that when it happens again, and oh yes it will happen, maybe my heart won't break. Because I'll expect it.

Wild, Wonderful West Virginians

I grew up in quiet, Appalachian suburbia. Let's face it, I may claim to be a West Virginia hillbilly, but I'm truly a city girl. Charleston isn't a big city, but it's West Virginia's biggest city and I spent my formative years in the lap of Chemical Valley. My parents weren't wealthy. Heck, they were more like holding-on-to-lower-middle-class-by-their-fingernails. It was our neighbors, the people who worked for Union Carbide, Rhône-Poulenc, and FMC, who were upper middle-class, who owned the suburban dream and who funded my public education with their tax dollars. It was the children of these people who were my friends. I had an easy childhood with two parents who loved me and were law-abiding citizens. None of my friends were trouble-makers, their parents worked high-paying jobs with the chemical companies, and we all took the buses to and from school while the coal barges and coal trains took our black gold (and its profits) elsewhere.

Just 40 minutes away from my hometown of South Charleston is Boone County, West Virginia. Just 40 minutes away from all of us living the Appalachian dream, there is a completely different world. It's a world of coal mines that can kill you in a heartbeat, coal companies who don't care if their miners live or die because they can replace one miner with two or three waiting in the wings. It's a world of live today because you may be dead tomorrow. It's a world of lying to, cheating, and stealing from your fellow man because King Coal and the government has lied to you, cheated you, and stolen from you your whole life and what other way is there? It's a world of pickin' and clickin'.

It's the world of the White family.

I remember watching the Dancing Outlaw on PBS when I was 13 and being completely astounded by the spectacle of Jesco White and his family. Six years later, Jesco was the half-time entertainment at the local Thanksgiving Day football game. His tap-dancing Elvis act was marred by a horrible sound system and the inability of the game announcer to play Jesco's requested music. Jesco then precluded his dancing with a drunken barrage of foul language directed to the announcer and the audience in general. That day will forever stick in my brain.

Now, 20 years later, I have watched the Wild, Wonderful Whites of West Virginia, a documentary about the White family, produced by Johnny Knoxville. The White family still takes my breath away. Yes, reader of mine, there are true hillbillies still living in the hollers of West Virginia and they are immortalized on film. Not all West Virginians are like the Whites. In fact, I don't personally know anyone from West Virginia like this family. But, they do epitomize all West Virginians to a degree. We will all give you the shirts off our backs and the last dollars in our wallets if you need it. But if you do us wrong? Well, then you may not want to stick around to witness the consequences.

Ladies and gents, I give you the trailer for the Wild, Wonderful Whites of West Virginia. It's currently playing on Showtime and available on DVD. It's 90 minutes of your life you'll never get back, but it's 90 minutes of peeking into the lives of some old-school, hell-raising, West, By God, Virginians.

(BTW, maybe watch this at home. Stuff is bleeped and fuzzed, but still. Just to be safe. Don't say I didn't warn you.)

Fiddle On, Senator Byrd

It was probably August, 1978 or 1979. My family was at the West Virginia State Fair and I was six or seven years old. As usual, evening was closing in and our day at the fair was ending. My cousins and I had eaten our weight in elephant ears, corn dogs, and funnel cakes and ridden the fair ground rides until our brains were scrambled. Our parents and grandparents were equally exhausted after trolling through the agricultural contest entries and eating their weight in Polish sausages. It had been a long, hot, dusty day. We were gathered at the tent of a family friend who arrived every year from Louisiana to sell Troy-Bilt tillers. He was near the livestock buildings so you can imagine the end-of-day hay and manure smell.

Suddenly, there, coming along the walkway, flanked by two Secret Service agents, was Senator Robert Byrd. One agent was carrying Senator Byrd's fiddle because that night, on the main stage, West Virginia's very own United States Senator was going to play the heck out of some down-home bluegrass.

Unless you're from West Virginia, you don't understand the mystique of Senator Byrd or the adoration we mountaineers had for him. Democrat or Republican, city boy or country girl, coal miner or white collar office worker in Charleston, everybody loved him because in a state most of the country didn't give a rat's ass about, Senator Byrd gave us attention, love, and money. (Most of you non-West Virginians call it pork. Whatever. Scoff if you must. Sniff. He brought us out of the dark, literally, and into the 20th century.)

When Senator Byrd walked through the fairgrounds, time slowed. We all stopped to watch him pass through, smiling and waving as he did so, and I vividly remember my little feet carrying me to him as quick as they could go and shouting, "Senator Byrd! Senator Byrd! My Daddy ate dinner with you!" Because what my six-or-seven-year-old brain knew of Senator Byrd at that time was that he was a legend, and said legend had eaten dinner with my father's Fraternal Order of Police lodge just a few months prior, and I felt compelled to share that nugget of information with the man himself. What he said back to me is lost to my fading memory, but I do remember his smile and that he hugged me.

Senator Byrd, you will be dearly missed by West Virginians the world over. Fiddle on, my hillbilly brother, wherever you are.



*Image credit: Berkeley Springs, WV

Hillbilly Mentality

OK, you all seemed to enjoy the story of Penny's leg. Here's some more messed-up hillbilly mentality for you.

On my mother's side of the family, there are five of us first cousins. I'm in the middle. The oldest is Brian who is six years older than me. Of course as a pre-teen (Are they called tweens now? Whatever.) I had a huge crush on him. But by high school, he was just my cousin, my big, lovable, funny, cousin, who tortured me on a regular basis - much as an older brother would terrorize a little sister. I looked up to him and he's a funny guy. By the time I started college, Brian was in graduate school and lived with his mom, just a few miles from my house. During the summer, we hung out a lot together. One night, he invited me over for beer, chocolate chip cookies (what a combo) and a horror movie (this ex-Army paratrooper claimed to be scared watching horror movies alone - wuss!). We did our cousin thing, which consisted of hanging out, and crashing on Aunt A's gigantic L-shaped couch. In payback for past torture, I put my feet next to Brian's head. Sweet satisfaction.

Next morning, Saturday, dawns. It's 6 AM and the phone rings. Brian answers and hands the phone to me.

Brian: It's your dad.

Me: Dad? Whaddaya want? (Said in a very slurred, beer/cookie hangover, it's 6-damned-AM-why-the-hell-are-you-calling? voice.)

Dad: Where are you? (Said in the extremely harsh, over-protective-dad-ex-cop voice.)

Me: I'm at Aunt A's house, crashed on the couch with Brian. What do you want?

Dad: You need to get home NOW!

Me: Why?

Dad: You just need to come home!

Me: Is something wrong with you or Mom? Uncle Curtis?

Dad: No.

Me: Then, I'll get home when I've had a shower and breakfast. What's wrong?

Dad: Nothing. You just need to come home as soon as possible.

*Click*

Ooooooookay. I handed the phone back to Brian and we fell back asleep with Brian making some smart-ass remark about my smelly feet. I kicked him. Cousin-love.

So, anyway, we roll out of the house about two hours later and I stumble home. Dad? He doesn't say a word to me about the phone call or my night with Bri. I finally told Mom about the call and asked her opinion. What does she come up with?

Mom: Your Dad must have been worried about some hanky-panky (yep, she said hanky-panky) between you and Brian.

Me: EWWWWWWWWWWW! He's my cousin! That's just.... nasty!

Mom: Well, people around here have married their cousins.

Me: Oh. My. God! Not us! He's.... Brian. That's just wrong.

Brian now lives in the Pacific Northwest with a wife, son, and step-son. We don't talk as much, now that we're busy with our respective families and lives, but we have managed to continually laugh about the morning my dad thought I was screwing my first cousin.

Blech.

Oh, and? As a bit of side info? It's against the law to marry your first cousin in West Virginia, the state where everyone thinks everyone is married to their sibling or cousin. But in Georgia? My adopted state? One can marry their first cousin. Ish. I'm just sayin'.

By the way, make sure you head over to Miss Britt's blog today, where I'm guest posting. Thanks, hon!

The Case of the Buried Leg

A comment left on Britt's blog reminded me of a very funny story involving my dad's ashes, a family burial plot, and a buried leg.

As you all know, my father died ten years ago in January. Two weeks later, his older brother, my uncle who was more grandfather than uncle and who was a great influence in my life, died as well. His death was due to a heart attack, but Mom and I know it was, literally, a broken heart. I was the executrix of his estate and, therefore, had to take care of his remains.

Both he and my father wanted to be cremated and I was going to scatter their ashes. Personally? I think cemeteries are the biggest waste of real estate. My father's and uncle's remaining brother and first cousins all protested. They wanted a burial site to visit, clean, mow, and take care of. So, I acquiesced and, on a hillside near Paint Creek, West Virginia, on a plot of land donated to my family by the coal company that owns said mountain, I stood amongst family headstones, looking for the perfect spot. All my first cousins-once removed (being from West Virginia, you've got to know all this first-, second-, third-cousin twice removed crap - otherwise, how do you know who it's OK to marry?) were standing around, waiting on me. There was Clorine (no, seriously, that's her name) and her husband Deskar (who could only whisper because of a WWII injury) and Sug (her name was Violet - Sug, as in sugar, was her nickname) with her husband Mike. Sug and Clorine were sisters. My mom stood next to me.

So, I finally chose the perfect site. It was at the upper corner of the plot, under a tree. I pointed there and said, "That's where I want to bury them."

Sug - Oh, you can't bury them there. Penny's leg is there.

OK. Back story. Penny is the other sister and she only had one leg. The other had been lost in a car accident when she was much younger and, it turns out, the family had buried the leg she lost.

Me - Seriously? You buried Penny's leg?

Sug - Yeah. We didn't want to lose it.

Well, for the first time in three months, I busted out into laughter. This? Wasn't regular laughter. This was tears coming out of my eyes, doubled over, on my knees, laughter.

Me - Holy crap. You buried her leg?

I could barely function. I finally calmed down enough to choose the opposite far corner of the plot, Dad and Uncle Curtis were buried, and we left. Now, whenever I visit their grave sites, I say hello to them and to Penny's leg. She died a couple of years ago and I don't think they reunited her with her leg. Sad for her, great for me and my sense of twisted humor. How can you be sad at a cemetery when you're talking to a buried leg?

My friends Toni and Jenny? They just wanted to know if the leg was dressed in a pants leg, sock, and shoe before it was buried or naked. Box or bag?

Questions we'll never know the answer to...

Unless in a drunken fit of curiosity, I go up there with a shovel.

Anyone want to join in?

Just Wondering...*

* Dear blog-verse. It's a bitchy kind of day. I apologize. If you're not in the mood for bitchiness, you want to continue on your happy Tuesday path, please go elsewhere. This is something I need to get off my chest. Thanks for tolerating!

OK, my mom moved to Georgia back in July, 2005 and my dad died 10 years ago this month. During the 2004 Christmas holiday Mom revealed she was ready to make the move south and when we found out one month later that I was pregnant, she had an even better reason. Now that she's here, she's become active in the Red Hat Society and gained many new, lasting friendships.

See, this is what I'm wondering.

We both have friends and family back in West Virginia. Friends and family with whom we keep in touch, religiously, but who don't return the favor. We call, they don't. We write, they don't. We've traveled north for visits, they haven't made the trek south. I have made sure to tell these family and friends that my door is always open and that the guest bed is always made. Seriously. I keep the guest room clean and ready at all hours of the day and night. I would LOVE to have West Virginia friends and family visit.

To date, one friend and one cousin visited over eight years ago (both on business), one uncle and aunt have stopped by twice on their way through Atlanta (once for a football game), and another friend and her mother stopped in for two hours on their way to the Peach Bowl. (Seems we're only worth it if there's work or football involved.)

Seriously, do I stink?

Sniffing armpits.

I mean, really. What is up? Friends of mom's have said repeatedly "We're coming! Turn down the sheets!" and....

... they never show.

Oh, but, we're expected to drive north eight hours.

A 500-mile drive I performed three times a year or more before kids and only once after kids because a 500-mile drive, with twins, one who gets violently car sick 15 minutes away from home and sobs and fights against her car seat the rest of the time, becomes a 700 to 800 mile, 12-hour drive.

I. Shit. You. Not.

Oh! But we want to see the kids! Bring them to the family reunion! Bring them up for the holidays!

Sure! You going to fly down here and help us on the drive up? You going to put us up in your house? And assist in the drive back? No? Because the one, one-week trip, I made in 2006 wore me out so much that I needed a vacation AFTER my vacation.

Well, guess what. I'm done asking.

It's much easier for you to come here, stay here for free at our house, take in all Atlanta has to offer, and visit with the kids in their own environment, where they're most happy, and not have to worry about my kids trashing your non-kid-proofed home.

But, I guess that's just too difficult for our high-fallootin' West Virginie kin to manage.

Whatever.

After 14 years, I've given up. I'm no longer going to throw out the invites any more. I'm finished.

For any of you West Virginia friends and family who may be reading this, you all know where the heck I live. Otherwise, I'll see you when the kids are older and better travelers. I'm tired of "begging" and asking for your presence. These are precious kids and you are all missing out. I guess the lack of contact from your end, the lack of interest, means that you don't care and never did. I'm taking this to mean that you have no interest in me or my family. I think it's pretty sad that our friends who live in GERMANY have been here to visit more times than any of you.

If that's the case, then I guess we're better off without you. This was the last invitation.

Country Roads...Mountain Mama...Yadda Yadda

OK, let's get into it. My home state. West Virginia. West "By, God!" Virginia. It is, believe it or not, a state not, as many think, a geographic area of Virginia. We were admitted into the Union during the Civil War, on June 20, 1863. Let's face it, western Virginians were fed up with being cut off from the wealthy Virginia landowners, their southern ideals, their ownership of slaves, and had practically no dealings with the state government in Richmond. When Virginia joined the Confederate States of America in 1861, those 19th century western Virginians decided they had had enough. West Virginia is the only state to have seceded from another state and, let's face it, Abraham Lincoln needed all the support he could get. Our statehood was constantly called into question by Virginia until 1871 when the US Supreme Court ruled in West Virginia's favor regarding county line disputes.

Our motto is Montani semper liberi - Mountaineers are always free, our bird is the cardinal, and our flower is the dogwood (yeah, not very original since we copied Virginia). One of our economy's main resources is, you guessed it, coal. The economy is poor, a college education is not a priority for the majority of the population, and even though it has the smallest percentage of people speaking a language other than English at home, those back-woods citizens living out in the "holla" speak a version of English that is barely understood by the rest of us.

Despite all of this, West Virginians are some of the friendliest people you will ever meet. Growing up in a hardscrabble environment with constant hardships make Mountaineers a rugged yet loving people. What upsets me the most is that a lot of morons in this country don't even know that West Virginia exists.

I once wrote a check in my college bookstore and when I showed my West Virginia driver's license to the cashier she said, "I have a cousin who lives in Richmond!" I even heard of a fellow Mountaineer whose West Virginia ID was rejected because the store clerk claimed it was a fake ID meaning, "There's no such state as West Virginia." Those people who do realize that we are a state think that all Mountaineers are stupid hillbillies whose only occupations are marrying their cousins and making moonshine. All I have to say is I've never tasted moonshine in my life and my husband is SO not my cousin.

OK, sure, I've been living in Georgia for the past 13 years. But, once a Mountaineer, always a Mountaineer. Just ask Don Knotts, John Corbett, Jennifer Garner, or Senator Robert Byrd. West Virginia has some of the most beautiful scenery in the country, and great outdoor activities such as skiing, hiking, whitewater rafting, BASE jumping (from the New River Gorge bridge), and fishing. My home state is an outdoors man's (or woman's) paradise.

The only bad thing about being from West Virginia? John Denver's song Country Roads. Being called a "Mountain Mama" anytime someone finds out you're a Mountaineer is not cool. So, stop it already, 'kay?

Go to http://www.wv.gov, educate yourself about the union's 35th state, and if someone ever tells you they're from West Virginia you can shock them by saying, "I know this girl from Charleston!" They'll be mighty impressed!