Who are you, really?

"There's a difference between opinion and conviction. My opinion is something that is true for me personally; my conviction is something that is true for everybody - in my opinion."
~Sylvia Cordwood

So.. I'm pretty opinionated. No really, I am. I know I seem shy and retiring...
I had a pretty cool childhood. My mom was simply the best ever and my dad was perfect. Well, I thought so. I grew up in a small town (population 100, seriously). I have very hazy recollections of life before Kindergarten. We moved from Vegas when I was 4 and the transition was different for everyone in my family. It set a course for all of our lives that was very different than it WOULD have been had we stayed in Vegas. I'm going to stick to my story even though every one of us have a story to tell. Mine is perhaps the least interesting, mostly because I don't remember the pain of leaving friends behind but I do remember how I made all of my new ones and how they shaped me. My PERSONAL story lacks the real tragedy that others could express and how they became who they were because of it.

One huge sacrifice, for me, was that I saw my dad for 2 days a week. He stayed on working for the electrician's union he'd worked for when we lived there and Utah is a pretty union free state. He would NOT work in Utah. Had my parents been divorced, I would have spent more quality time with my dad but was content waiting for him to retire.
Shortly after we moved there (across the street from my maternal grandparents)my grandfather passed away. I don't remember him much at all, I just remember the overwhelming sadness of his loss in others, especially my Grandma, the last grandparent I had.
There's few perfect things in the world but one of them was my Grandma. She was the best and her contribution to who I am is huge and one I feel unworthy of. She didn't like being in her home alone at night after my grandpa died so my sister spent nights with her there during the summer and my grandma stayed nights in my bedroom during the school year. This went on until my sister got older and had other things that conflicted, so I stayed with her. Then as I grew older my niece took over but it was something each of treasure. She passed away when I was 15. The first huge loss to me. I'd experienced death before, but she took a part of me with her and left a part of herself with me.

My dad was so different than anyone I ever knew or have known since. When he died I was 17. I asked my mom and sisters to not speak ill of him in front of me because I planned on believing he was perfect for the rest of my life. I felt I'd been cheated. Even then I knew it wasn't true. I remember knowing then that his moods were not your normal, run of the mill, moody person moods. More like childish tantrums that no one really understood. I took note and when I recognized that I'd inherited that from him, I wasn't going to ruin holidays for everyone for no apparent reason. I never understood how a happy family gathering could be thrown away by the person I loved and cherished my short time with. I was determined to fight it and it has gotten the best of me from time to time but until The Headache From Hell, it was never as difficult a battle. My dad was a Democrat, BIG TIME!! I remember him coaching my sister to debate with her teachers in school who were Republican sheep. The one she debated the most with was my driver's ed/history teacher when I got into high school. He slept in the passenger seat as we did our student driving but had an uncanny ability of knowing when we took the car above 55 mph and nearly threw us through the windshield if we rolled through a stop sign. In history, HIS copy of the textbook said "Murdering Bastards" when the books we had mentioned a Kennedy and "Filthy A-rab" when teaching us of anyone of middle eastern origin regardless of actual geography. This could be an explanation to why history is my least favorite subject in the world. Anywho.. I knew nothing of politics but if my dad said the sky was blue, I would argue it was green. I inherited my argumentative and opinionated nature from him. I was a Republican because he was a Dem and I'd rather be a fat pachyderm than a stupid ass any day of the week... Ahh the ignorance of childhood. He was born and raised in Pennsylvania so Steelers and Pirates were a given (I can't remember if I've ever mentioned that he and his brother was approached by minor league scouts when he was younger). When I was 15, Superbowl XIX rolled around and the Steelers were out. SF 49ers vs. Miami Dolphins. I know zilch about football but Joe Montana was hot. Naturally this meant my father was rooting for the Dolphins. I had advertised our epic battle of wills a bit too much because our home teachers (scroll to the last definition) came at the time the game began and spent well over an hour telling us the evils of worldly pursuits such as television, football, and especially the Superbowl on the Sabbath (pretty sure they were both Republicans). As soon as the door hit them in the backsides the game was on and let's just say that I've also taken the opposite approach to my father's handling of being wrong. I don't think of myself as a loser or an idiot, I think of myself as a the person who had a fairly major part in bringing my brilliant little chiclets into the world. Though I can't take all of the credit, I try to take the things that have shaped me and teach them to my children. I won't ever even come close to thinking I'm mother of the year material, maybe unorthodox mother of the year, but I do my best under the circumstances and I'm proud of the little people I'm raising. I'm also my biggest critic, therefore constructive criticism is unnecessary.

I've also mentioned the evolution of my life since the headache. I'm not as good a mother as I once was. Not as good a friend, family member, daughter. Maybe not as good a person. My days were so full. Hobbies, yoga, PTA, volunteer work in my kids classrooms, LOTS of church callings. I love to read and learn so more and more time is devoted to that. I have varied interests but we all know that much of my time has been devoted to President Obama for over a year now, actually close to two.

I'm often astounded at the amazing ignorance of rural Utah and the intolerance that is taught to children from their birth. The town I live in now is a bit more liberal because it's a University town. I'm not a racist or intolerant at all and I've tried to make my kids understand the cancer of hatred towards someone different than they are. You can't explain it, they have to see it. After one of my daughters informed my that she was out of school for Milk Day which baffled the heck out of me did I realize she meant Martin Luther King Day. I showed them his most famous speech and explained segregation but still, they didn't begin to comprehend it. My nephew who I love like a brother married a gorgeous black woman who I LOOOOOOVE talking to. They have four beautiful children and if we lived closer our oldest daughters would be so close because they are so similar. I swear, they communicate through telepathy.

The first taste of racial history came from the remake of Hairspray which was funny and the completely bizarre thought of John Travolta as a woman with husband Christopher Walken was hard to look past but my kids were appalled at the idea that people in America was treated that way. Second was the play my oldest daughter and her friends wrote and acted in and won their way to the regional history fair based on Rosa Parks. But the thing that drove it home was when I began campaigning for Senator Obama to be our President. They believed they could handle the opposition at school and (I'm ashamed to say) church. Even to the point that eventually they were afraid to defend him which made them feel weak. Instead they stayed silent.

When the campaign began I had no idea who to vote for, partly from ignorance and partly because I didn't like the candidates I did know. I used Glass Booth to help narrow down to the candidates that shared my views. First place was John Edwards but something about him screamed sex scandal. Mmmhmm, I called it. Senator Obama was my next choice. There are few things I don't agree with him on and oddly I'm more liberal. I loved the grassroots support that some people interpreted as worship of an imagined incarnation of the Messiah. I see it as American people coming together to put a man in office that they truly love and are inspired by. Is there anything more American than taking the future of the country into your own hands? It was historic in THAT sense alone. I recognized that I could take an active part in history. My children will remember how I fought for my beliefs. My convictions. I didn't do it for shock value or popular opinion. I did it because I listened to a man speak of hope and change for the country I live in that seems to have lost many of IT'S convictions. Vaclav Havel said: “Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out”. We couldn't go on in the direction we've been going. That is how ruts are formed. We MUST have change because the world around us is changing and like it or not, so are we. Our children need to know that in order to improve the world around us, we must take risks and we've never been cowards before.

I'm proud of my small part of the election of the first black President. I'm honored to listen and be moved by him and know deep down that, though he doesn't know who I am, he appreciates what I've done and admires MY convictions. I'm also happy that my children see me never falter in what I know is right and know they are proud of me too. I know that, like me, they will not follow the path of least resistance or fall in with the ignorance of the people around them but will question the veracity of what seems wrong to them. I will support them in all that they do, so long as they make educated choices, form their own opinions, live according to their own convictions. In the end THAT is what I learned from my dad. He was flawed and sometimes he was wrong but he was true to his beliefs and formed them in an educated manner. I'm not perfect either and as I spent this last weekend with my family I discovered that I stand apart from them more now than I ever have. Not because I'm a half sister or because my headache has changed me and I'm reclusive, but because we've all changed. Every single one of us. We can't go back to who we were but we can examine ourselves and ask if who we are and what we think is true to ourselves and if our convictions are truly a hope for a better existence for everyone our lives touch. Or are we so shallow that we lack true beliefs? Do we want what is true for us to benefit the people around us? I certainly have MY opinion on that one but that is something that belongs to me. Kind of like the Patch does.