Jake and I were about to come to blows, pushing each other around near the
pitching mound, when my mom walked by. She was a fair distance away,
about thirty yards, but I could immediately see by the change in her body
language that she knew what was going on. Of course, the other kids saw her
as well. She walked right by. I knew that hurt her. Part of her was worried
that I would come home with a bloody nose and a black eye. It would have
been easy enough for her just to yell, “Hey, you kids, quit that!” or even to
come over and interfere. But she didn’t. A few years later, when I was having
teenage trouble with my dad, my mom said, “If it was too good at home,
you’d never leave.”
My mom is a tender-hearted person. She’s empathetic, and cooperative,
and agreeable. Sometimes she lets people push her around. When she went
back to work after being at home with her young kids, she found it
challenging to stand up to the men. Sometimes that made her resentful—
something she also feels, sometimes, in relationship to my father, who is
strongly inclined to do what he wants, when he wants to. Despite all that,
she’s no Oedipal mother. She fostered the independence of her children, even
though doing so was often hard on her. She did the right thing, even though it
caused her emotional distress.
Toughen Up, You Weasel
I spent one youthful summer on the prairie of central Saskatchewan working
on a railway line crew. Every man in that all-male group was tested by the
others during the first two weeks or so of their hiring. Many of the other
workers were Northern Cree Indians, quiet guys for the most part, easygoing,
until they drank too much, and the chips on their shoulders started to show.
They had been in and out of jail, as had most of their relatives. They didn’t
attach much shame to that, considering it just another part of the white man’s
system. It was also warm in jail in the winter, and the food was regular and
plentiful. I lent one of the Cree guys fifty bucks at one point. Instead of
paying me back, he offered me a pair of bookends, cut from some of the
original rail laid across western Canada, which I still own. That was better
than the fifty bucks.
When a new guy first showed up, the other workers would inevitably
provide him with an insulting nickname. They called me Howdy-Doody,