I was raised mainly by my mother, a very proper and educated woman, who married my step-father, an incredibly educated man of many amazing talents and extraordinary skills. The foundation these two provided me is one I will be forever grateful for, and in awe of. And on most issues, I find myself nearly completely aligned with them, one or the other, from political science to values and morals, all the way to the benefits of gardening and keeping an uncluttered house. They showed me what I would refer to as the refined side of life, and provided for me a structure that if properly utilized, could have led me to a much less painful and difficult life.
But when my onrey teenage years threatened the tranquility and peacefulness of their stable and comfortable home, and when they came to the end of their ropes with my outbursts and angst and teen rebellion, it was off to my Father's house I was shipped. At not-quite-sixteen, I, for the first time since I was six years old, became reacquainted with the man that failed to hold my mother's heart and affection. Oh, I had spent some time with him in the interim, a Christmas once a blue moon, two weeks in the summer here and there--but he was not a man I knew or understood.
Aside from always using proper grammar, one of the strongest opinions my Mom held, for as long as I could remember, was that guns were terrible bad destructive life-taking things; so bad in fact, that when summertime hit, and all the other children in the neighborhood were running around laughing and screaming playing their squirt gun fights, my brother and I were excluded. We weren't ever allowed to possess any toy that in any way what-so-ever resembled a gun. Yes, including SuperSoaker 5000's. Perhaps a bit overboard, but her position was firm, "Guns are not toys, and they are not to be played with."
I always knew my little brother was getting the worst end of the shaft, being denied cap guns and nerf-gun missle projectors, and anything else boys his age seem to play with in abundance. Although seeming desperately unfiar, several life events led me to appreciate her view, and share it rather readily; when I was in fifth grade, one of my neighbors, Eddie, who had picked on me often while waiting for the school bus, accidentally shot my friend Jeff, a darling of a boy--dead--just two doors up for me. Three years later, the boy I had a year-long crush on stole his fathers handgun and shot himself in the head in the park where he and I had often sat and talked and sang Cat Stevens songs at the top of our lungs in. I can hear his clear voice hollering "Oh baby, baby it's a wile world, and I'll always remember you, like a child girl." His was the first funeral I ever attended. I decided mom was right, and became nearly as convicted in her views as she was.
One could say that my arrival in the rural blue-collar farmland of Northwestern Pennsylvania, from my very posh Seattle-suburb hometown, was a slight bit of a cultural shock for me. My Dad, then, lived a foreign life from that which I had grown accostomed to. See, he was a hunter, in a big way. Things my mother turned her nose to were a common reality in my new world, that only I seemed appauled at. There were taxidermist deer heads hanging in nearly every room of his home, and it seemed their fake glass eyes stared at me from any point in which I could find to exist. Dad had shotguns, and a LOT of them. He had rifles and pistols and revolvers and bows and crossbows and if he hadn't used them with such skill and accuracy, there were many times his family would have gone hungry.
I had previously known a life of luxury, The Gap and Guess jeans, hundred dollar hair appointments, a different ethnic restaurant twice a month carrying at least a hundred and fifty dollar tab for the four of us to experience culture... Plays and ballets, musicals and art museums, from a home my step-dad (and the rest of us) had constructed ourselves with Costa Rican hardwoods--which we had traveled to their origin to select from... Suddenly, I found myself living on 20 acres of back-hill woods, connected to the rest of the world by twenty miles of dirt roads. I was surrounded by family I had never known, who said things like "Runnan fetch me them ones over there. Now, girl!" I was at a loss in a big way.
But, being a bright girl, valuing adversity and overcoming it, and loving and identifying with the spirit my Daddy embodied, I learned quickly not to correct my Grandmother's grammar, and actually, discovered it best to use it myself on occassion so as not to seem quite the snotty rich brat they had pre-determined I was. (In my Grandmother's case, I don't think I ever succeeded...)
I dicovered that here, in my new world, boys didn't go to school the first week of hunting season, nor during haying season. I learned that it was not just acceptable, but appropriate for ten year old kids to own (and use) their own shotguns. I learned that my daddy said a prayer after killing each animal he ever killed, and though he didn't believe in the same God many Christians do, he prayed none the less, and thanked that animal for its life, that it would sustain his now grown-by-one family. Seven kids is a lot to feed. (Three of us biologically his.) I saw a deer skinned and butchered, and threw up three times afterwards, and adamantly refused to eat meat for six months. But I also learned that guns weren't nearly as scary or dangerous as my mother had made them out to be. They were tools. (And while I was on my vegetarian spree, I envied the looks I saw on the faces of my family members, eating that venison with gusto.)
I experienced my first and most impacting shifts of paradigm the year my mother sent me there.
One of the first warm days we had, my Dad woke me with excitement screaming from his eyes--he was so thrilled I could hardly wait to discover what was so happy about this day. He wouldn't divulge, but kept hinting at how great of a day this was going to be. Finally, I squeezed it out of him, nearly dying with the need to know what this secret and wonderful plan of his was. Slowly, he took me out into the yard, through the rabbit hutch, past the pigs' mudpit, beyond the duck pond... And to my absolute HORROR I saw his plan. He had set up several bails of straw--targets--and had two shotguns already out at the picnic table, waiting to teach me my new life lesson.
All I could do was say "NO!" in my hardest loud sixteen year old voice, then, "Nooooooo," whinier the second time, pleading. His excitement, in a flash-flood moment, crashed. The gleam in his eye, for two seconds turned to great sorrow, and then anger, then conviction.
"Yes." He stated simply and firmly. "Noooooo Daddy," I wailed. "Sit!" he demanded. Dumbfounded, I sat. His lecture seemed to take hours, but the crux of it was that the only thing unsafe about these guns was the fact that I didn't know how to use them. And he'd be damned if ANY child of his, living in his house, did not fully appreciate and comprehend the workings of these tools. I remember telling him Mom would never allow this kind of thing, and with clarity, I recall him saying, "Well your mother didn't raise you at all the way I would have, but now you are here, and I'm going to salvage what I can, daughter."
I pleaded and begged, and sobbed and wailed, all to absolutely no avail. There was going to be no escaping this, I was going to spend the day learning every safety measure, every care, how to dismantle, clean, and reassemble, each step that could possibly be involved in owning and using a firearm. And then I was going to shoot it. Oh my god, that was the longest day of my life. I cried more than I listened, and eventually he had repeated everything so many times I could recite it verbatim, though in an uneven and dispassioned voice. By the early evening, when it had become clear that I would not be entering his home again, till I had shot that beast of a gun at least ten times, I caved, my will power far out-matched by his.
The day had not gone well, there had been much screaming (by me) and much stern loud talking over it (by him). The excitement in his eyes had fled at the start and not returned, and I was feeling rather ugly that I had thrown such a fit and ruined what he had expected and hoped to be a day of good fun. And so, I took my aim, carefully like he said, and I shot that gun. I shot it dead-on, smack in the middle of the first bail of hay. Oh, I had tears streaming down my face, and I wasn't happy. But damnit, I do everything I attempt with my best effort, and even this--though it repulsed me, was no exception.
Stunned by the blast, and shoulder aching, I glanced at my Daddy. I am not sure I've seen the pride reflected in his face with such velocity since. This was a man who was truly in awe, and so proud of his oldest daughter, he overflowed with it. And this daughter felt like she managed to salvage some of the joy of this day, with a simple click of a trigger. I was a natural, he later boasted to my uncle. I secretly had smiled, but carefully, and only on the inside.
Shooting with dad became one of my favorite past-times. Those days that we spent together were filled with stories of his youth, his life lessons, his tall tales, and real ones. He's a helluva' story teller, my papa. They were filled with warmth and connections and growth, in a way I had never experienced with another human being. They were filled with love and pride and joy. My daddy got his little girl back--hope was not lost--just the ten years between 6 and 16.
I never thought I would own a gun. And until yesterday, I never did. After living with my Dad for a few years, I had moved back to Seattle, married a man that felt much the way my mother did, with less conviction, on the gun topic, and raised a child, never considering the need or desire for home security. And though I had once learned to appreciate the days of target practice with dad, I always knew I could never bring myself to shoot a living animal. I'd eat berries and leaves and tree bark first. But, I left my husband 9 months ago, and in the time I've been on my own, I've discovered I want the sence of security a shotgun in my home could provide.
That is how it came to be that I asked my best friend, on her way to my house from hers, 700 miles away, to stop at my dad's new house, just down the road from her, and bring me one of his shotguns. Now--she's always felt much like my mother and ex-husband, and her reply, upon my request, was the best any friend could hope for. First, she wanted to make sure it was legal to transport that kind of thing across state lines. I assured her it was (but later discovered she didn't quite believe me and so had had a good long discussion about it with the police chief... hehe) She secondly asked that it be concealed in a box or something, so her daughter wouldn't see it--a fair request to me--though one she ended up choosing not to follow through with, as the value of having a real life experience with a gun was one that she decided out-weighed the need to conceal it. I'm so proud of her! Thirdly, she asked that it be dismantled as much as possible, that there was NO way it could work at all while in her possession.
She arrived and told me that Dad had sat with her and showed her how it worked, demonstrated how to put it back together again, and given her and her daughter some quick gun safety lessons. We brought it into my room and she assembled it for me, and I took the sexiest picture of her I think I've ever taken in our 16 years of friendship. I fucken love it. And I fucken love my Daddy.
