Hello my dear friends,
Thank you for subscribing to this lovely weekly newsletter. I value the opportunity to talk to you these mornings. Like I said at the beginning, I started this because I missed my Sunday morning ritual of having tea and chatting with friends.
If you know me in real life then you know sometimes I show up with something totally out of the blue. This is one of those mornings! This is a piece I wrote earlier this year. If you’ve read it before, feel free to skip it. You won’t hurt my feelings, though I have made some tweaks, additions, and changes.
xoxo, Heather
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Blame It All On My Roots
“You know they say you can’t be just a little bit pregnant?” I said out loud to 85 of my coworkers during a presentation. “Well, you can be just a little bit incapacitated. It’s not an on-and-off switch.”
I was co-presenting a legal education seminar on how to spot red flags of elder abuse. I hadn’t planned on using such a colorful analogy to discuss capacity. It just popped out.
Aside from capacity issues, another challenge is getting people to open up about being victimized. In order to get someone to share their pain with me, I have to establish a rapport, I explained to the audience.
“I like to turn on my Mesquite charm. It helps them let their guard down,” I joked, bringing out a more-Texan-than-usual accent. This tactic works, too. A casual, “So tell me what’s been going on,” in my native cadence works better than a sterile, “Please explain the extent of your abuse.”
As a kid, I never would have imagined my drawl would be an asset I could use to help clients. Starting in my early teens, I tried to escape my accent. I hated that I didn’t sound like the girls on TV - your Kelly Kapowskis, who cheered in a non-regional dialect, and your Clarissas, who explained it all with no hint of southern tone. I was able to shake the speech impediment of my early years which rendered my Rs and Ls to Ws. Meaning that my dad’s impressive Christmas light display went from “un-bee-weeve-able” to just “unbelievable.”
I may have kicked the impediment but not the accent. Little country-talking Heather was who I was. My family spent many Wednesday nights at a local restaurant called Trail Dust to enjoy the all-you-can-eat steak night. Trail Dust was a wild west themed steakhouse in my hometown, adjacent to the Mesquite Championship Rodeo. That sentence is chock full of Texanness, and for that, you are welcome.
A massive, two-story building, Trail Dust served customers on long lines of tables covered in red and white checkered plastic tablecloths. If you came in wearing a tie, they’d snip it off and staple it to the wall alongside your business card. The restaurant’s second story boasted the facades of an old west town, complete with a jail, bank, and hotel.
But how, you may ask, would you get from the second floor back down to the first? Via stairs or an elevator, like a mere mortal? No, by way of the 30-foot-long metal slide. A skin-tearing behemoth that terminated on a slick wooden dance floor, the two-story slide launched you right into a row of tables seated with customers.
Music blared over the speakers - Reba, Garth, Willie, both Brooks and Dunn. They had it all. After 7PM, a band would take the stage, playing music made for boot-scooting. My family wouldn’t usually stay long past when the band started playing. Dinner time for my family was meant for talking - no distractions, no TV, certainly no cell phones because we weren’t time travelers, and no country music bands.
We would pay our check and head toward the door, greeted by a looped track of Roy Rogers and Dale Evans singing “Happy Trails.” My mom would always stop and listen, at least for a full chorus.
Anytime I try to tell myself I’m “not very country,” I think of even one aspect of going to Trail Dust and remember I am country as HELL. The sizzle of a hot steak. Steam rising off the family-style bowl of beans. Tipping up that Heinz bottle to cover my garlic bread with ketchup.
What? I was 10 years old.
Back then, we kept the family radios tuned to the country stations. I knew all the words to “Heads Carolina, Tails California.” I wanted to find a love like Tim and Faith. I found myself in complete awe of Garth and his hat and his spiffy, tailored cowboy shirts. Garth’s songs have everything you would want in a hit tune. Cursed ghosts who wander in eternal agony. Murder. Accidental deaths borne from the hubris of man. More murder. Double fisting frozen bevs on the beach. Banging cougars on a farm (the ladies, not the animals). Even more murder.
Good lord, Garth. Are you ok, bud?
I watched music videos on CMT and sang along with KSCS. Then, without warning, it all became unbelievably dorky. I can’t pinpoint the exact moment, but I think the shift hit somewhere around middle school. One day it’s Dixie Chicks lyrics, the next day it’s Eminem. The itch inside me that only a steel guitar could scratch went unsatiated. For years.
The tides of coolness had shifted, so I played pretend. I chose to deny myself the auditory miniseries that is a Garth Brooks record because some string bean in basketball shorts who couldn’t even grow pubic hair somehow made me feel ashamed.
When I very first moved to Chicago, I often found myself masking my love for all things country and trying desperately to hide my accent. Anybody who has heard me talk at any point from 1990 until now probably finds the idea of me being able to conceal my accent hilarious. But still, I tried.
Why do we suppress those parts of ourselves that make us who we are? For fear of being truly seen? We can try cowering in the safety of homogeneity as much as we want, but sooner or later, the dam will break. All those things we try and hide will spill out, burning to be seen.
I eventually came to embrace my Texanness once the parts that couldn’t be hidden slipped out. One particularly rainy day on Navy Pier had rivers of water rushing down the stairs beneath the Ferris wheel and toward our small office.
That day, I had the pleasure of teaching my midwestern coworkers the concept of a “turd floater.”
turd float·er | tərd ˈflōdər | noun
When it rains so much that the septic tanks overflow and the turds float away
Classy.
As I’ve grown, I have sloughed off the need to feel “cool.” This is partially due to what I like to believe is maturity, and partially because all the cool youngsters aren’t on Facebook anymore. With that concern for fitting in now disregarded, I am now free to return to what makes me feel good.
I can relish the pure joy of a man in a Stetson admonishing me not to rock the jukebox. Another with a glorious mullet reminding me of the simple pleasures of rice cookin’ in the microwave. I can break free on an open road, my feet hitting the pavement in time, while a butter smooth voice croons to me about showing up in boots and ruining a black tie affair.
My pace quickens. Breathless, I sing along. After all, I can’t help myself. It’s just who I am.
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