Flashes of Panic

I have been doing a lot of thinking in recent weeks about my connection with my hometown. Quite a lot of it has to do with actually understanding that community relative to the rest of the country, hence my strong response to reading The Lobster Coast.

The more immediate aspect was illustrated this weekend, when I was in a shop downtown, talking with the owner, and she said, “You look like one of John’s boys.” (I am.) It reminded me of when I was working in the lumber company, back in high school, and a customer made the same observation; we had to take a second to disambiguate, because in his context, I was actually “one of John’s boy’s boys”—he was talking about my grandfather.

There’s a lot to be said about this kind of recognition; it’s an instant connection to a community, in a way that doesn’t happen much nowadays. This is a mixed blessing, though, because every connection comes freighted with all past interactions with the rest of your family, and I don’t think there’s a family in the world where all such interactions are viewed positively.

I’d love to have a neat, pithy denouement for this observation, but there isn’t one. It’s a situation everyone resolves in their own way, assuming they even consider it, and the resolution is the way you live your life, not a few sentences I can write here.

Now Playing: East of the Mountains from Songs for a Hurricane by Kris Delmhorst