Growing up, we had a big-ass woodpile and a dad who taught me how to swear with the best of them. I’ve spent the past 30 years trying to run away from that foul-mouthed teenage girl and that stupid little town, thinking there was something inherently wrong with her. Well, she’s making a reappearance… call it a midlife crisis, gettin’ back to her roots, or just plain sick of trying to be someone she isn’t. There’s been this unspoken agreement that the Adamson family is just plain messed up. Which in its own right is correct. However, things I learned in that messed-up family are truer than true. For instance, most things in life nobody wants to do, but they have to get done, and somebody has to do them.
Back to that big-ass woodpile… when you live in northern Illinois, and the only heat source is a single wood-burning stove, you carry wood. It doesn’t matter how cold it is or how old you are… you carry wood. You learn a few things fast… the more wood you carry in a load, the faster you get out of the cold. The faster you carry that heavy load, the faster you get out of the cold. The faster you can get that load, the faster you get out of the cold. And the faster you get in and out of the house, the faster you get out of the cold. We came up with a system. One person loaded, high and heavy. Another person opened and shut the door. It didn’t matter who loaded, carried, or held the door; we were all working toward the same goal. Get the wood in the house as fast as possible to get out of the bloody cold. It was a one-for-all and all-for-one life. It’s where I learned what it meant to care for the people around me, even if I didn’t do it very well back then. And how to consider what others were going through and the desire to make this world better for somebody. It’s where I learned how to suck it up and push through when all I wanted to do was quit. Fast forward to six kids, unhappily married, and a butt load of laundry, dishes, and diapers. Nobody wanted to do it; I didn’t want to do it. But somebody had to do it… the tears would come, the absolute sadness and heaviness would come, but the diapers got changed, meals prepared, kids read to and tucked in, dishes done, and eventually, the laundry got folded and put away. I have a love-hate relationship with that suck it up mentality. It has served me well over the years, but it often feels like it broke a few things inside me along the way. Maybe it just sloughed off stuff that wasn’t useful; I don’t know. Time will tell.
But I carried wood today…
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