A field guide to growing up without growing apart
If you haven’t gotten the point by now; I’m loving living at home. There are tons of expected perks (free food, rent, an endless supply of craft supplies) but there have been even more unexpected ones too, like my mother waking up early to hug […]
I’m just going to come right out and say it. I was my parents’ DD last night. Yup, you read that right, DD as in Designated Driver (Sober Soldier, Chaste Chauffeur, Timid Transporter, Glum Guide, Boring Betsy… did I just get carried away?) I, a […]
Okay, so don’t freak out. I know all of you are thinking: ‘what? I thought this was a fun blog and now Merskank is going all preachy on us…’ But, please, hang with me for a second.
So, yeah ‘modesty’ is a slightly loaded word—I feel like it is more often used in the negative rather than in the positive: girls in particular are often described as immodest while few are ever acknowledged for having modesty. But it is a term I have been reconsidering a little lately.
Now, when I was in high school I was very ‘modest’. I never liked to wear shorts and would never, ever have worn a vee-neck of any sort. Yet although this behaviour was ‘modest’ I don’t think it was particularly admirable; I think it really was stemming from fear and lack of confidence in my self—I didn’t want people looking at my legs because I was worried that they would think they looked funny, or fat, or ugly, and if I wore a lower-cut shirt I didn’t want them thinking I was a slut, or ‘trying too hard’. Basically, I didn’t feel good in my own skin.
Luckily, since then, my confidence has risen and I have gradually grown less modest: shorts are now okay, skirts of varying lengths are a go, and sometimes I even wear tank tops. Generally, I think this change is a good one, but in the past few weeks modesty has come back into the forefront of my thoughts. Well, my dressing choices have never been wild—to my knowledge no one has ever branded me with the word ‘immodest’—but I think the intent and heart of your clothing choices always matters more anyway. I am no longer motivated by fear like I was in high school, but lately I keep assessing my wardrobe and thinking: maybe my shirts shouldn’t be tight, maybe the skirt doesn’t need to be short.
I’ve realized that modesty in my life now means something totally different than what it meant to me in high school. It used to be that I was worried about what people thought but now my motivation is often more personal. Maybe this sounds a little weird to people, but it relates to how I have been thinking about the body and soul lately. I think that our body is more closely tied to our soul than people realize—in Old English poetry the body is called the modsefa (the place of the soul) or feorh-hus (the spirit-house), and in the Bible we get the image of the body as a temple to the Lord. Both of these images clash with the externally-oriented vision of the body that is pushed in popular culture, one where philosophically you are supposed to judge by ‘intent’ and ‘people’s hearts’ but paradoxically body and image still receive so much attention.
When you first meet someone you don’t tell them your deepest thoughts, your sacred secrets—you wait, get to know them, and then maybe you tell them. For me recently, modesty has become more like this. Why would I want some person I don’t know (and probably can’t trust) staring at my breasts or at my butt? Yet somehow although most of us wait to trust someone with our internal selves, we are happy to display our bodies. I don’t think those things are as different as we think they are. Either way you are exposing yourself to others before you know enough to trust them. And there are always consequences: when you give someone information about yourself it is like you are giving a little piece of your self that you can’t really take back. For me, recently, I have been thinking that I need to give my body a little more of the respect I give my soul and think twice before I make it a public spectacle.
So, yeah, basically I am not trying to tell anyone else how to live their life. Modesty means different things for different people and we should be confident loving our bodies and loving ourselves. I just wanted to share my ponderings and say that maybe next time you dress a particular way, you should ask yourself why. May the answer provide you interesting avenues for thought.
I have been reading ‘the Confessions’ by Saint Augustine lately. If you haven’t read it you probably should: Augustine is the best. Not only is he is crazy-wicked smart (ever want to have your mind bent inside out?– try book xi of the Confessions ‘On […]
I never look at who I sit next to on the bus. Some people ask for permission to sit, some people evaluate their options before settling on the lessor evil, some people even play musical chairs hopping from seat to seat as better options open […]
Alright, I’m just going to lay it all out there.
I moved back in with my parents and am an unemployed college graduate with no plan.
There. Now you know. A few weeks ago I would have stretched the truth and told you that I was just moving home to drop off some things while sorting through apartments or just waiting to hear back from a few job interviews before making my choice. I wasn’t really that girl who was moving back in with her parents and didn’t have a job. It never felt real to me, but there is nothing like family to make you face reality and boy oh boy do I have a lot of family.
When my grandpa died two weeks ago I had no idea what I was getting into. He was only 75 when he lost a rough battle with cancer and I expected the week in Minnesota to be full of quiet time and stories about his life. My papa was a jokester, and the guy who never wore a shirt no matter the season. The last time we talked, he reminded me I owed him an Egg McMuffin because his basketball team beat mine and he repeatedly called me crazy for not owning a car. His garage was his refuge and spoke his mind especially when it wasn’t politically correct. These were the things we needed to talk about.
But instead of time to process privately with my family, I got an education in the Midwestern funeral, which is much bigger than I ever could have imagined. My grandpa died Thursday morning and after a few choice phone calls(I found out via Facebook but that is another story) the work began. Plots and paperwork, planning and photos, the next two days were nonstop and unforgiving. Widows are bombarded with five hour appointments at the funeral home and three hour meetings with the pastor. The phone continuously rings and an absurd amount of food and flowers overcrowd the already crowded house. Those days are a blur, and the only thing keeping us all going was pure necessity.
By Sunday most everything was in place except our wardrobe; the perfectly nice black dresses in our closets simply wouldn’t do. But shopping was a nice break from the buzz of the house. That night we held a viewing, where people are invited to come pay their respects and greet the family. My grandma, mother and her two sisters stationed themselves in front of the open casket and talked with each guest as the line progressed. They hugged every crying man and listened to every person talk about the man they love in the past tense. It was brutal to watch, and I can’t imagine how it felt to have him laying behind them. I forced myself to look a few times and I’m glad it didn’t look like him. The cancer had already changed his face but the embalming made it even more wrong; when I think of him, I won’t think of him like that.
The next morning things really got rolling. There was a visiting hour before the church service where people are invited to come pay their respects and greet the family. The widow and her girls lined up in front of the casket again and this time people in the line could look at the photo boards and slideshow we made. The line was still a half hour long when the pastor herded everyone in to the pews and told us to say our goodbyes as he closed the casket. The service was simple and nice, though we all said papa would have fallen asleep during the pastor’s reading. We, the grandkids, went up and lit candles and my brother read a poem he wrote. After the service, there was a three hour luncheon at the church where people are invited to come eat, pay their respects to the family and wait to go to the burial.
We drove in a caravan to the cemetery and the honor guard shot their rifles and played their bugle. They folded a flag and gave it to my grandma. We went back to visit every day after.
But even after the viewing, the visiting hour, the service, the luncheon, and the burial there was still a constant stream of visitors and phone calls over the week to come. The house was inundated with flowers and a hundred sympathy cards filled with money(who knew?) had to be processed and turned into thankyous. That alone was exhausting, but over 150 people came to my grandfather’s viewing and another 250 came to the church service the next day and as a grandchild, and the oldest girl, I was expected not only to be present but to entertain. So for those roughly 8 hours over two days, I not only had to talk about my dead grandfather, but also had to face my own future, saying out loud the sentences that are so often associated with failure.
Every ten minutes I stuttered as I said I live with my parents and don’t have a job. My mom’s best friend from high school, a great aunt, a distant cousin, I had to tell them all that at 23, I was jobless and living with my parents. There wasn’t time to explain that I could easily have kept working in Seattle. I didn’t know them well enough to say that I just needed a change. Who was I to tell them that I think I deserve a better job than I had? I tried other ways to get around it, asking about the other person so much that I never had to bring it up, or I’d just change the subject entirely. But it always came back to the phrase, I’m living at home and unemployed. I’m living at home and unemployed. Yes. I’m living at home and unemployed.
It was a tough week to say the least, but the crazy thing is that once I walked through the doors of my parents’ house, I felt altogether okay. Talking with those relatives forced me to come to terms with my new life here and I’m going to be okay. And all that hubbub around the funeral showed me how loved he really was and we’re going to be okay without him.
Papa always said he wanted no one to come to his funeral because that meant he’d outlived us all. He got the opposite, dying way before his time. And while I know it wasn’t what he wanted, I have a feeling it works out no matter what.
Greetings Blogosphere! How goes it?! I’m Sleeping Booty and I’ll be your author today(and every 2nd Thursday from here on out) and I can barely contain how excited I am to get rolling on this project. It’s been a long year since graduation, and I’m […]