I grew up listening to both sides of my grandparents’ stories about the old days (which they were fond of, but did not characterize as good).
Having families who remembered the struggle really helped put my own life in perspective. Being called ‘okay for a foreigner’ despite being born and raised in the USA, or packing up and moving away from your lifelong home and all your family and friends to escape creditors, or having your dad steal a goat so the family could eat for a while, or having 12 people living in a two-room house without running water…
As shitty as my life in a leaky apartment with a negligent landlord and a precarious financial situation is, I always try to keep in mind that it could be much fucking worse.
My parents were born and raised in the wilderness and they thrived there most of the time. But they also reminded us that their lives were very precarious. Mom had an uncle that died as a child because he ate the wrong plant. Dad had a relative die of infection from cutting their hand with an axe. Both of them remember a period in the 1950s when they were children when a famine occurred in the wilderness when animals literally disappeared everywhere - it’s a natural phenomenon where animal populations rise and fall over periods of years or decades. The animals in the forest just disappear, birds migrate elsewhere and even fish stocks deplete. It’s not so much from overhunting, it’s just a cyclical thing that happens due to weather, environment, disease or other factors. When animals grow scarce in the wild due to natural cycles, people just starve. Dad had stories of seeing people boil hide moccasins to make a soup just to eat anything. Women became so frail they couldn’t produce breast milk anymore so they resorted to spoon feeding babies fish broth.
So they were both always quick to mind me and my siblings … life is good today, no matter how bad you think it might be.
I grew up listening to both sides of my grandparents’ stories about the old days (which they were fond of, but did not characterize as good).
Having families who remembered the struggle really helped put my own life in perspective. Being called ‘okay for a foreigner’ despite being born and raised in the USA, or packing up and moving away from your lifelong home and all your family and friends to escape creditors, or having your dad steal a goat so the family could eat for a while, or having 12 people living in a two-room house without running water…
As shitty as my life in a leaky apartment with a negligent landlord and a precarious financial situation is, I always try to keep in mind that it could be much fucking worse.
My parents were born and raised in the wilderness and they thrived there most of the time. But they also reminded us that their lives were very precarious. Mom had an uncle that died as a child because he ate the wrong plant. Dad had a relative die of infection from cutting their hand with an axe. Both of them remember a period in the 1950s when they were children when a famine occurred in the wilderness when animals literally disappeared everywhere - it’s a natural phenomenon where animal populations rise and fall over periods of years or decades. The animals in the forest just disappear, birds migrate elsewhere and even fish stocks deplete. It’s not so much from overhunting, it’s just a cyclical thing that happens due to weather, environment, disease or other factors. When animals grow scarce in the wild due to natural cycles, people just starve. Dad had stories of seeing people boil hide moccasins to make a soup just to eat anything. Women became so frail they couldn’t produce breast milk anymore so they resorted to spoon feeding babies fish broth.
So they were both always quick to mind me and my siblings … life is good today, no matter how bad you think it might be.
Where did they grow up?