I'm glad you mentioned the cloudy winter. I was wondering about that. I grew up on the cloudy side of my state (Washington, USA) and moved later to the sunny side, over the mountains, so it was always a subject of appreciation in our family to have light coming in the windows at all seasons. As soon as you said you were looking for angles of light in Warsaw, I thought, "Uh oh!" I hope you can find a balance between the location and the craving for light. I know it well. :-)
As my essays likely make plain, I've never been able to shake Montana's hold on me. It's interesting that there are some provincial similarities between the MT and NYC mindsets, as we've discussed. Montanans like to think of it as The Last Best Place. And while I agree with Bill Holm that the heart can be filled anywhere, it takes effort to break those formative ties. I have some fond memories of Iowa, which became a home for a time. And I'm doing my best not to simply live in exile in Pennsylvania until my kids are college age. But Montana will always be home. Something in the blood wakes up when I return.
As seems to be often the case, I am caught by a side point in your story. When I was 10 or 11 (I am now 81), a girl in my Brearley class (I have no memory of who it was, only the fact of the occasion) took me to see a friend of hers who lived in the Pierre! Could I have met your mother seventy years ago – or were there a number of people who lived in the Pierre? I can't remember what she looked like or what her name was, but I was impressed with where she lived.
Indeed, I am the opposite of you – having been brought up in Georgetown when it was a fairly quiet unassuming neighbourhood in Washington and then in Yorkville on the upper East Side of NYC, when it still had signs of its German background, I feel fairly rootless. It was very easy for me to move to London in 1968 where I feel very at home. I gained British citizenship for convenience and subsequently gave up my American citizenship (and wrote a funny piece about the process) but never really 'feel' British. Makes for a complex relationship with pronouns - do I say 'we British' (can't) or 'we Americans' (don't).
Ann, I am intrigued by your approach to old age (you like it!) and wonder if you would do a Q&A with me on my Substack. I did one recently with K.R. Dodd and it was well received. I also love the title of one of your books: “The Granny Who Stands on Her Head.” Here’s my Q&A with K.R.: https://debbieweil.substack.com/p/q-and-a-with-kr-dodd
Yes, I do genuinely like being old (I turn 82 in three days) for the confidence it has brought me and a lot of other things as well, such as my two grandsons. This is not the place to communicate, so do feel free to contact me via my Substack (where the pinned post includes a two minute video of me standing on my head) or via ar@annrichardson.co.uk, but yes,I would be delighted to do a Q&A.
I would always draw forts and figure out to defend them. No castles for me. My grandmother, who was a sod hut teacher in Nebraska, would takes us to Saturday matinees. She loved Westerns. So I got to watch Randolph Scott, John Wayne and many others. She told me she met Buffalo Bill when she was a young girl. After the matinee sometimes we would go to Woolworth’s five and dime for a hamburger. On Saturdays they would be older men having coffee at the counter. They would always rub your head when you were close by. My brother and I learned to walk around another aisle to avoid them. I asked my grandmother who they were and she told us they were WW1 veterans and they came in to chat with their friends and some were just lonely. She always talked of the 3 Gs. Grit, gumption and guts. She lived part of her childhood at the county jail as her father was the sheriff of Lincoln county, Nebraska. Between her, my mother and my father they made the greatest impression on me in my life. So fortunate to have them.
David, I love your question! I grew up in Mt. Kisco, NY in a large rambling house. Nothing particularly special about the architecture, as I think about it now. But I can remember every nook and cranny and hallway and room of that house. Yes, there were backstairs for servants (although I ran up and down them). I was an only child til I was eight so I also remember the feeling of loneliness, especially in the afternoons after school when I played outside by myself. And I got married in that house when I was 21! Interestingly, I don’t “love” that house. It’s just there, indelible in my memory, a representation of my childhood.
I’m an Australian but I watch an American show ‘House Hunters’. It always amazes me how many Americans want a house just like they had as a child. They know all the styles of architecture and are oh so picky about things.
By comparison I was always taught that it’s a house’s occupants that matter. It’s a place of love and caring. I barely remember my childhood homes.
It is intriguing how a parent’s beliefs are passed so profoundly to their children. Hopefully we learn to stand back and consider their worth later in life. But I worry that many aren’t taught the necessary analytical skills to weigh up those beliefs. But that’s a whole different issue.
Always so much food for thought. Thank you. And all the best.
One of your best articles yet David. Really loved reading this one.
There is no doubt in my mind that where I grew up is indelibly imprinted on my soul and continues to influence me in every facet of my life. Every time I go home to see my parents I get goosebumps on my skin in anticipation of planting my feet back on the earth from whence I came. The fields of corn and wheat and beans filled with wildlife. The overpowering scent of life after a summer rain. Even now as I sit here writing this my heart is longing to go home and have some of my mother's fried chicken.
There was no money in my childhood but fortunately for me the hills and forests don't care where you came from or how much coin you have in your pocket. Where we come from greatly influences who we are.
All the best my friend and thanks again for a beautiful essay.
Those would normally be fighting words but it looks like you are a Navy veteran so I am going to let this one slide. Ha! (I am about to retire after 24 years in the Navy).
I grew up in a well-maintained but garishly appointed brick duplex in a decaying Pennsylvania town, equal parts Rust Belt and Appalachia. I was raised as an only child by lower-middle-class grandparents who dutifully met my material needs but were not stimulating companions, so like many Gen Xers, I was truly raised by television. I am struck by how many of my childhood memories involve the moody glow of one of the five (yes, five!) TV sets: the “big TV” in the living room, the basement TV where my grandparents lounged in a rec room, my bedroom TV playing MTV while I did homework, the spare bedroom TV where I exclusively watched baseball for some reason, and the small white cube TV in the kitchen, the one my grandfather referred to as “the utility set.” It was on during every meal.
When I was in middle school, I would sneak downstairs after my grandparents had gone to bed, turn on the sickly but benevolent fluorescent light above the kitchen sink, and watch the Weather Channel at a low volume on the utility set. Sometimes I would pour a glass of milk. It became a cherished ritual. Decades later, it occurred to me that I have often tried to recreate in my own adult apartments the snug mood of those evenings spent alone, briefly suspended in optimistic peace. I took in the rhythm of the national forecast and the smooth jazz that heralded local conditions. Sensing correctly from an early age that I would leave my hometown and likely never return, I contemplated our national geography and felt heartened by the maps, especially the multicolored temperature one that was covered in white numbers like Argus eyes. I imagined myself in quiet communion with all the other people watching, wondering at the souls in Phoenix, in Miami, in Tulsa. In International Falls or Minot. Even when you felt invisible, you too were on the map. And even when you were just at home, you could be everywhere.
Brian, this comment was so compelling. How unusual to watch the Weather Channel and derive such significance and even magic from it. I hope you go live soon with your Substack. I subscribed. it seems to me you have a lot to say and the skill to say it.
It's easy to love my hometown and childhood because I was always thankful for it - thankful for what was provided, thankful for the small things, not thinking I was "better" than because my dad worked hard to provide for the 7 of us. Gratefulness, thankfulness, humility, being taught that "to whom much is given, much is required" with a quiet servant's heart, built character and provided valuable perspective growing up into adulthood. Also, I love NYC! Thanks for the insightful glimpse into your childhood. Reading as a super-power is spot on!
Thanks Mary. Sufficient gratitude was definitely a "miss" in my upbringing. I've had to learn it along the way and I hope and think we've given it to our children. But more gratitude would have made me a better person as a child and young man.
Wonderful sense memory here, David. I saw you as a small child in that mansion and on that walk with your mother. Yes, my childhood home was the brown shingled farmhouse outside of Princeton surrounded by wild fields and orchards, renovated by my architect mother, my father in the adjoining back house writing. It was a place of magic and secrets and sometimes violence when my father drank. I left angry but long, at times to return.
I found this fascinating. I grew up and attended college in the NY metro, and I've often thought the experience of "The City" must be so different for someone with money. "My" New York is inextricably intertwined with the smell of urine in doorways, the filth and noise of subway platforms, drinking piss beer at East Village dive bars, $8 haircuts at Astor Place, and cheap eats like falafel at Mamoun's, slices at St. Mark's pizza, pea soup at Cozy Soup & Burger and pierogis at Theresa's. My college memories of NYC include gutsing it through Port Authority and past all the catcalling sleazebags outside the peepshows on 42nd Street to get to my summer and winter break job on 41st and Lex. My own working class Jewish origins lie in Newark, NJ by way of Ellis Island and before that, a shtetl in Kiev.
I LOL'd at the image of you as a shock-collared dog living in the 1-mile uptown rectangle and the description of your cavernous apartment with your bedroom located in the hinterlands beyond the Suez Canal. Too good! It brought to mind the Mazels. Interesting that the WASP snobs in your building gave your Jewish family a pass because the money and name change made it so easy to forget who they were--or maybe many of them didn't even know?
In high school, my favorite day was lunch at Serendipity III and browsing at Bloomingdales (never could afford to buy anything there), followed by ice cream sundaes at Rumpelmeyers in the Plaza Hotel and maybe a walk in Central Park if it was summer--my way of pretending to be that privileged child that you actually were.
I recognize your New York. :-) "Mine" too, when I lived there around 1990, had that smell and noise and hunt for necessities on a budget. I also imagined what it must be like to have money in the city, but I loved that you could step into a fine hotel lobby or a department store or library for no more than subway fare or the cost of shoes. The builders with money wisely created public as well as private spaces. Part of my New York experience was the thrilling hunt for those spaces.
Good point about the public spaces. I used to love to use the bathroom in the Plaza and hang out in the lobby with my friends until someone kicked us out. It felt like we were sticking it to them somehow!
Never been to NYC but everything I have been reading here shows there are many versions of the Big Apple. I always think of the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building.
Central Park has become may favorite place in NYC. When i was growing up in the 1970s, it was in poor condition and dangerous. Now, with the help of both the city and a private organization, the Central Park Conservancy, it's really a treasure and a haven for everyone. When I'm in the Park and i look around, it seems as if everyone is happy to be there.
Thanks for sharing your story David. This explains the unexplainable odor I’d always smell walking the halls in college 😂: “I never made my bed, slept on a bare mattress, rarely did laundry, ate twinkies and pizza, gained twenty pounds, and probably smelled quite bad.” But gaining 15-20 lbs is pretty standard I think? I know I did.
I loved that description too! I knew someone whose room was like that; he was my bf's suite-mate (they shared an absolutely vile bathroom between them), and his room disgusted me. He would wade through the stuff on the floor to open the door.
I also gained that freshman 15, largely from the endless supply of cereal in the cafeteria. I ate Cap'n Crunch for dessert at every meal!
Sorry, David, but I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. That you were shaped by your circumstances, just as the annual rings of a tree will become less circular as the tree grows? Aren't we all shaped the same way, regardless of our circumstances? That growing up rich gave you advantages that you now feel guilty about? Depends on what you do with those advantages, doesn't it? Seems to me that the subtext here is about choices. It is far different if you take those advantages to use as a bludgeon against others as you claw your way to even greater advantages...need I give you the most obvious example...than if you use your advantages to try, in some small way, to make the world a better, fairer, and more generous place. Those choices are available to anyone, of course, but someone who grows up rich, educated, and aware of their position has a better chance of making an impact. I don't know how you lived before--if you feel you were among those who held the process back--but it seems to me that you chose to write these columns as to search, as a means to try to move the process forward. Rich or poor, that is all any of us can do.
I was trying to describe how growing up I "digested" my physical surroundings and living circumstances and was unaware for quite a long time how strongly they influenced me. So, yes, this is an introspective search rather than a statement of philosophy.
I suspect that is true of all of us. My parents grew up during the Depression and the impact on their outlook and behavior, financially, socially, and politically (until my father became successful, of course) could not, in retrospect, have been more obvious. (Physical surroundings is part of all that.) But the cause and effect was anything but obvious to me as a kid. So, did those attitudes shape mine? Sure, but I was not aware of it until I was a bit older, as happened to you. Poor kids undergo the same phenomenon, I'm sure, although the impact is manifested quite differently.
Thank you David for this excellent essay. You offer great insight into growing up in a life of luxury and privilege which I find interesting because I've always wondered how that would be. As you said here though, your gorgeous home became simply your home. Wherever we live, even if it seems exotic, it becomes our home.
I grew up very removed from anything exotic! It was the northern Canadian prairies. The term redneck (which I use lovingly sometimes) comes to mind. It wasn't until I arrived at mid-life that I realized the imprint the land and place still held on my soul (for good or for bad). I am working to both honor it and grapple with it.
The northern Canadian prairie seems very exotic to me. And it is fascinating to step back and wonder how, what as children we took for granted as simply our home, shaped us.
Thanks Isabel for the kind words. My mother had her moments and an unusual relationship with money, which I should write about at some point.
I'm glad you mentioned the cloudy winter. I was wondering about that. I grew up on the cloudy side of my state (Washington, USA) and moved later to the sunny side, over the mountains, so it was always a subject of appreciation in our family to have light coming in the windows at all seasons. As soon as you said you were looking for angles of light in Warsaw, I thought, "Uh oh!" I hope you can find a balance between the location and the craving for light. I know it well. :-)
As an Aussie I can SO empathise with this. 😃🤗
As my essays likely make plain, I've never been able to shake Montana's hold on me. It's interesting that there are some provincial similarities between the MT and NYC mindsets, as we've discussed. Montanans like to think of it as The Last Best Place. And while I agree with Bill Holm that the heart can be filled anywhere, it takes effort to break those formative ties. I have some fond memories of Iowa, which became a home for a time. And I'm doing my best not to simply live in exile in Pennsylvania until my kids are college age. But Montana will always be home. Something in the blood wakes up when I return.
"And I'm doing my best not to simply live in exile in Pennsylvania until my kids are college age."
I know Montana has a big hold on you! Thanks for the comment.
If it must be an exile, may it at least be fertile for imagination!
As seems to be often the case, I am caught by a side point in your story. When I was 10 or 11 (I am now 81), a girl in my Brearley class (I have no memory of who it was, only the fact of the occasion) took me to see a friend of hers who lived in the Pierre! Could I have met your mother seventy years ago – or were there a number of people who lived in the Pierre? I can't remember what she looked like or what her name was, but I was impressed with where she lived.
Indeed, I am the opposite of you – having been brought up in Georgetown when it was a fairly quiet unassuming neighbourhood in Washington and then in Yorkville on the upper East Side of NYC, when it still had signs of its German background, I feel fairly rootless. It was very easy for me to move to London in 1968 where I feel very at home. I gained British citizenship for convenience and subsequently gave up my American citizenship (and wrote a funny piece about the process) but never really 'feel' British. Makes for a complex relationship with pronouns - do I say 'we British' (can't) or 'we Americans' (don't).
Ann, I am intrigued by your approach to old age (you like it!) and wonder if you would do a Q&A with me on my Substack. I did one recently with K.R. Dodd and it was well received. I also love the title of one of your books: “The Granny Who Stands on Her Head.” Here’s my Q&A with K.R.: https://debbieweil.substack.com/p/q-and-a-with-kr-dodd
Yes, I do genuinely like being old (I turn 82 in three days) for the confidence it has brought me and a lot of other things as well, such as my two grandsons. This is not the place to communicate, so do feel free to contact me via my Substack (where the pinned post includes a two minute video of me standing on my head) or via ar@annrichardson.co.uk, but yes,I would be delighted to do a Q&A.
Ann,
It's possible that was either my mother, born in 1938 or her younger sister, my aunt, born in 1941. Stranger coincidence have happened!
Sounds like you're very happy to be where you are now.
Best,
David
More likely your aunt, who would have been in the same year as me! What a funny thought.
Meanwhile, yes, I sure am very happy to be where I am now. I even wrote a short post on the subject of how life turns out: https://arichardson.substack.com/p/counterfactuals
I would always draw forts and figure out to defend them. No castles for me. My grandmother, who was a sod hut teacher in Nebraska, would takes us to Saturday matinees. She loved Westerns. So I got to watch Randolph Scott, John Wayne and many others. She told me she met Buffalo Bill when she was a young girl. After the matinee sometimes we would go to Woolworth’s five and dime for a hamburger. On Saturdays they would be older men having coffee at the counter. They would always rub your head when you were close by. My brother and I learned to walk around another aisle to avoid them. I asked my grandmother who they were and she told us they were WW1 veterans and they came in to chat with their friends and some were just lonely. She always talked of the 3 Gs. Grit, gumption and guts. She lived part of her childhood at the county jail as her father was the sheriff of Lincoln county, Nebraska. Between her, my mother and my father they made the greatest impression on me in my life. So fortunate to have them.
Thanks for painting such a descriptive scene of how you grew up. And you were indeed fortunate to have such wonderful role models.
David, I love your question! I grew up in Mt. Kisco, NY in a large rambling house. Nothing particularly special about the architecture, as I think about it now. But I can remember every nook and cranny and hallway and room of that house. Yes, there were backstairs for servants (although I ran up and down them). I was an only child til I was eight so I also remember the feeling of loneliness, especially in the afternoons after school when I played outside by myself. And I got married in that house when I was 21! Interestingly, I don’t “love” that house. It’s just there, indelible in my memory, a representation of my childhood.
I think we remember our childhood homes in a way that's different than our memories of other places.
I’m an Australian but I watch an American show ‘House Hunters’. It always amazes me how many Americans want a house just like they had as a child. They know all the styles of architecture and are oh so picky about things.
By comparison I was always taught that it’s a house’s occupants that matter. It’s a place of love and caring. I barely remember my childhood homes.
It is intriguing how a parent’s beliefs are passed so profoundly to their children. Hopefully we learn to stand back and consider their worth later in life. But I worry that many aren’t taught the necessary analytical skills to weigh up those beliefs. But that’s a whole different issue.
Always so much food for thought. Thank you. And all the best.
Thanks for the comment Beth. My physical setting influenced me more than i realized. But of course the people are far more important as you wrote.
One of your best articles yet David. Really loved reading this one.
There is no doubt in my mind that where I grew up is indelibly imprinted on my soul and continues to influence me in every facet of my life. Every time I go home to see my parents I get goosebumps on my skin in anticipation of planting my feet back on the earth from whence I came. The fields of corn and wheat and beans filled with wildlife. The overpowering scent of life after a summer rain. Even now as I sit here writing this my heart is longing to go home and have some of my mother's fried chicken.
There was no money in my childhood but fortunately for me the hills and forests don't care where you came from or how much coin you have in your pocket. Where we come from greatly influences who we are.
All the best my friend and thanks again for a beautiful essay.
I’m sorry but my Mom’s fried chicken was the best. 😊❤️
Those would normally be fighting words but it looks like you are a Navy veteran so I am going to let this one slide. Ha! (I am about to retire after 24 years in the Navy).
Congratulations and Go Navy. I was in for a little over 3 years.
Thanks for that lyrical, beautiful remembrance. And I see you and McDude called a truce on the fried chicken question!
I grew up in a well-maintained but garishly appointed brick duplex in a decaying Pennsylvania town, equal parts Rust Belt and Appalachia. I was raised as an only child by lower-middle-class grandparents who dutifully met my material needs but were not stimulating companions, so like many Gen Xers, I was truly raised by television. I am struck by how many of my childhood memories involve the moody glow of one of the five (yes, five!) TV sets: the “big TV” in the living room, the basement TV where my grandparents lounged in a rec room, my bedroom TV playing MTV while I did homework, the spare bedroom TV where I exclusively watched baseball for some reason, and the small white cube TV in the kitchen, the one my grandfather referred to as “the utility set.” It was on during every meal.
When I was in middle school, I would sneak downstairs after my grandparents had gone to bed, turn on the sickly but benevolent fluorescent light above the kitchen sink, and watch the Weather Channel at a low volume on the utility set. Sometimes I would pour a glass of milk. It became a cherished ritual. Decades later, it occurred to me that I have often tried to recreate in my own adult apartments the snug mood of those evenings spent alone, briefly suspended in optimistic peace. I took in the rhythm of the national forecast and the smooth jazz that heralded local conditions. Sensing correctly from an early age that I would leave my hometown and likely never return, I contemplated our national geography and felt heartened by the maps, especially the multicolored temperature one that was covered in white numbers like Argus eyes. I imagined myself in quiet communion with all the other people watching, wondering at the souls in Phoenix, in Miami, in Tulsa. In International Falls or Minot. Even when you felt invisible, you too were on the map. And even when you were just at home, you could be everywhere.
Brian, this comment was so compelling. How unusual to watch the Weather Channel and derive such significance and even magic from it. I hope you go live soon with your Substack. I subscribed. it seems to me you have a lot to say and the skill to say it.
I’m looking forward to your Substack.
It's easy to love my hometown and childhood because I was always thankful for it - thankful for what was provided, thankful for the small things, not thinking I was "better" than because my dad worked hard to provide for the 7 of us. Gratefulness, thankfulness, humility, being taught that "to whom much is given, much is required" with a quiet servant's heart, built character and provided valuable perspective growing up into adulthood. Also, I love NYC! Thanks for the insightful glimpse into your childhood. Reading as a super-power is spot on!
Thanks Mary. Sufficient gratitude was definitely a "miss" in my upbringing. I've had to learn it along the way and I hope and think we've given it to our children. But more gratitude would have made me a better person as a child and young man.
❤️
Wonderful sense memory here, David. I saw you as a small child in that mansion and on that walk with your mother. Yes, my childhood home was the brown shingled farmhouse outside of Princeton surrounded by wild fields and orchards, renovated by my architect mother, my father in the adjoining back house writing. It was a place of magic and secrets and sometimes violence when my father drank. I left angry but long, at times to return.
Molly, I love how you write about your life on your Substack.
Thank you, David!
This is so good. I would read a whole book of your story
I found this fascinating. I grew up and attended college in the NY metro, and I've often thought the experience of "The City" must be so different for someone with money. "My" New York is inextricably intertwined with the smell of urine in doorways, the filth and noise of subway platforms, drinking piss beer at East Village dive bars, $8 haircuts at Astor Place, and cheap eats like falafel at Mamoun's, slices at St. Mark's pizza, pea soup at Cozy Soup & Burger and pierogis at Theresa's. My college memories of NYC include gutsing it through Port Authority and past all the catcalling sleazebags outside the peepshows on 42nd Street to get to my summer and winter break job on 41st and Lex. My own working class Jewish origins lie in Newark, NJ by way of Ellis Island and before that, a shtetl in Kiev.
I LOL'd at the image of you as a shock-collared dog living in the 1-mile uptown rectangle and the description of your cavernous apartment with your bedroom located in the hinterlands beyond the Suez Canal. Too good! It brought to mind the Mazels. Interesting that the WASP snobs in your building gave your Jewish family a pass because the money and name change made it so easy to forget who they were--or maybe many of them didn't even know?
In high school, my favorite day was lunch at Serendipity III and browsing at Bloomingdales (never could afford to buy anything there), followed by ice cream sundaes at Rumpelmeyers in the Plaza Hotel and maybe a walk in Central Park if it was summer--my way of pretending to be that privileged child that you actually were.
I recognize your New York. :-) "Mine" too, when I lived there around 1990, had that smell and noise and hunt for necessities on a budget. I also imagined what it must be like to have money in the city, but I loved that you could step into a fine hotel lobby or a department store or library for no more than subway fare or the cost of shoes. The builders with money wisely created public as well as private spaces. Part of my New York experience was the thrilling hunt for those spaces.
Good point about the public spaces. I used to love to use the bathroom in the Plaza and hang out in the lobby with my friends until someone kicked us out. It felt like we were sticking it to them somehow!
Finding a nice bathroom was the best thing of all! 😂
Hotel lobbies are key for their bathrooms and places to hang out. And yes there is that fun sensation of beating the system!
Never been to NYC but everything I have been reading here shows there are many versions of the Big Apple. I always think of the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building.
Central Park has become may favorite place in NYC. When i was growing up in the 1970s, it was in poor condition and dangerous. Now, with the help of both the city and a private organization, the Central Park Conservancy, it's really a treasure and a haven for everyone. When I'm in the Park and i look around, it seems as if everyone is happy to be there.
Thanks for sharing your story David. This explains the unexplainable odor I’d always smell walking the halls in college 😂: “I never made my bed, slept on a bare mattress, rarely did laundry, ate twinkies and pizza, gained twenty pounds, and probably smelled quite bad.” But gaining 15-20 lbs is pretty standard I think? I know I did.
I loved that description too! I knew someone whose room was like that; he was my bf's suite-mate (they shared an absolutely vile bathroom between them), and his room disgusted me. He would wade through the stuff on the floor to open the door.
I also gained that freshman 15, largely from the endless supply of cereal in the cafeteria. I ate Cap'n Crunch for dessert at every meal!
You made me laugh, Thalia.
I did shower, but I'm sure not as often as necessary!
Sorry, David, but I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. That you were shaped by your circumstances, just as the annual rings of a tree will become less circular as the tree grows? Aren't we all shaped the same way, regardless of our circumstances? That growing up rich gave you advantages that you now feel guilty about? Depends on what you do with those advantages, doesn't it? Seems to me that the subtext here is about choices. It is far different if you take those advantages to use as a bludgeon against others as you claw your way to even greater advantages...need I give you the most obvious example...than if you use your advantages to try, in some small way, to make the world a better, fairer, and more generous place. Those choices are available to anyone, of course, but someone who grows up rich, educated, and aware of their position has a better chance of making an impact. I don't know how you lived before--if you feel you were among those who held the process back--but it seems to me that you chose to write these columns as to search, as a means to try to move the process forward. Rich or poor, that is all any of us can do.
I was trying to describe how growing up I "digested" my physical surroundings and living circumstances and was unaware for quite a long time how strongly they influenced me. So, yes, this is an introspective search rather than a statement of philosophy.
I suspect that is true of all of us. My parents grew up during the Depression and the impact on their outlook and behavior, financially, socially, and politically (until my father became successful, of course) could not, in retrospect, have been more obvious. (Physical surroundings is part of all that.) But the cause and effect was anything but obvious to me as a kid. So, did those attitudes shape mine? Sure, but I was not aware of it until I was a bit older, as happened to you. Poor kids undergo the same phenomenon, I'm sure, although the impact is manifested quite differently.
Thank you David for this excellent essay. You offer great insight into growing up in a life of luxury and privilege which I find interesting because I've always wondered how that would be. As you said here though, your gorgeous home became simply your home. Wherever we live, even if it seems exotic, it becomes our home.
I grew up very removed from anything exotic! It was the northern Canadian prairies. The term redneck (which I use lovingly sometimes) comes to mind. It wasn't until I arrived at mid-life that I realized the imprint the land and place still held on my soul (for good or for bad). I am working to both honor it and grapple with it.
The northern Canadian prairie seems very exotic to me. And it is fascinating to step back and wonder how, what as children we took for granted as simply our home, shaped us.