My Million-Dollar Donkey

by East, Ginny;

  The problem was, after all that shopping, he didn’t have the energy to tackle getting the workshop organized, much less make furniture. Instead, he made trips to more stores to buy another set of clamps, non-slip cushioning for the floor, or wood, wood, and more wood for future projects. He soon had enough supplies for years of woodworking, but he had yet to build a workbench on which to make a simple birdhouse. He justified the indulgence by insisting he was ‘preparing’ for the good life when we would once again spend some time together as promised. We both took classes at the John C. Campbell Folk School. I’d write about whatever craft I had explored and even won a literary contest for one essay. Mark believed every craft he made belonged in a gallery so he would make a deal to buy tons of supplies from each teacher he worked with, preparing for that fateful day when he would actually start producing crafts for a living. But the stock remained heaped in piles in his crowded workshop, untouched.

  There’s always tomorrow to write the book or set up the workshop, we said, hanging on to the thread that the better life that awaited us made our current circumstances somehow more acceptable. But the next day, we’d be busy again. After all, one of our daughters had a soccer game. I had to feed the animals in the morning. Mark was going to pick up some more wood slabs from a fellow with a saw mill who was offering wood at a good bargain.

  We had always been achievement-oriented people, the kind of people who believe luck is really just the result of hard work and commitment. Our adopted town offered a prime opportunity for establishing ourselves in a new field, and yet we just couldn’t stay focused to make the vision of our new life manifest. We chalked our dysfunction up to our being burned out and exhausted from eighteen years of running a dance studio, telling ourselves we needed time to heal, but the truth was that living in the country alters a person’s inner time clock. The country was slow. Living here, we became slow too.

  Perhaps ego, or social conditioning, made accomplishment paramount to feeling alive. Perhaps the money at our disposal drained us of motivation, because in the past, the need to pay bills and the desire for a more comfortable life kept us at the grindstone. Now the only motivation we had for anything other than marking time was a nagging sense that we were not living up to our potential. We had walked away from the one thing we were truly good at, and for what? A bunch of wood slabs collecting dust in a workshop that wasn’t even broken in? For a donkey? Our money wouldn’t last forever, and our inability to start our inner engines to begin something new gave us a sick sense that our life was like a train chugging along a track that would soon run out of rails.

  They say six weeks of changed actions will break a habit, but for us, change took a year. Perhaps the reading material, when I finally got around to digesting the messages, helped. Perhaps the lack of shopping venues took the thrill off the shopping experience. Perhaps the failing economy was making frugal living trendy, or the country mentality was slowly seeping into our hearts and minds and we were shedding old behavior patterns as result regardless of our weak personalities. But one day, we were pushing the cart through Wal-Mart, and both of us suddenly realized there was really nothing we needed. We were tired of ‘stuff’ and deeply tired of our days being eaten up by driving to get that stuff. The idea of purchasing anything we didn’t really need seemed not only wasteful, but slightly gross.

  We checked out with the one item we had come for, a bottle of Liquid Plumber. Then we drove through Starbucks to grab a cup of coffee, but instead of sighing into the steam, we both winced because the coffee tasted bitter and burnt. The high dose of caffeine no longer appealed to our taste buds because we had finally re-conditioned ourselves to enjoy a cup of smooth, homebrewed coffee. The drinks languished in our cup holders, growing colder, just as our connection to shopping had.

  Were we really embracing simplicity, or had we spent so much that only when the sands of resource were running out could we in reality embrace the simpler lifestyle we claimed was so important to us?

  No lifestyle is perfect. Knowing what will bring you contentment is like the little ball that hides under a cup, getting juggled and quick-changed by a swindler with sleight of hand. The fellow moves the cups so quickly you can’t figure out where the prize is, so you gamble and take a guess. Eventually, you just point to a cup and whatever is underneath is what you have to live with. But oh, how I wanted to make mindful choices rather than be a slave to circumstance as defined our history.

  Denver was now twenty-one and she had spent the year enjoying family time, communing with nature, and taking pleasure in the simplicity of life in the country. She had developed a greater understanding of the environmental, educational, and emotional issues attached to a country lifestyle, so she was not sorry for having dropped out of college to join us. But enough was enough. She was done with the entire slow country thing. She was ready to venture to a place where life would be more stimulating.

  “I gotta get out of this town,” she said, with no small amount of desperation in her voice.

  “I understand completely. You still have a lot of living to do. You need to go places, meet people, and do things to stretch your awareness of the world. Someday, you may want to live in a place like this again, but for now, you need the energy and opportunity that comes with living in a city,” I said, inwardly applauding her revelation.

  “Don’t think I don’t appreciate nature and the quaintness of this town. I’m just ready to have some fun,” she said. “Everyone my age around here is already married and divorced with two kids. I can’t stand this place anymore. I want to date someone with a decent vocabulary. A guy who doesn’t chew tobacco and have a gun under the front seat of his truck.”

  “You should go,” I agreed.

  The problem was, she had cashed in and spent her college fund as well as the seed money we gave her for establishing an alternate career. For a year, she had enjoyed independent living while only working a part time job. Now, she had aspirations to go to school for jewelry design in California, but the Bank of Mom and Dad had closed its doors for lack of capital. She’d have to work and save her own money if she wanted to escape.

  “It’s impossible to make a decent living here. Every job is minimum wage,” she complained. “Even if I do want to get away and move somewhere with better work options, it’s hard.”

  “Putting money away to build up your college plan during our leanest years was hard, too,” I said. “But we found a way. You left school, and now you have to live with your choice and figure out what you’re going to do next. Changing your life takes work, sacrifice, and planning.”

  “I’m missing the best years of my life. A girl could rot here,” she said with a melodramatic sigh.

  “Not if you decide now you won’t let that happen,” I said. She was so young and had so much to learn about life. Like it or not, her existence would reinvent itself over and over as time wore on, for life tends to unfold that way. That said, a girl wouldn’t rot in Blue Ridge unless she did so by choice. Sadly, I knew the same sentiment applied to me.

  “We must walk consciously only part way toward our goal and then leap in the dark to our success.”

  —Henry David Thoreau

  CONNECTED IN THE COUNTRY

  I bought Kathy a copy of Webster’s Youth Dictionary, thinking the text might help with spelling. She gave the book a blank stare.

  Holy cow, she doesn’t know what a dictionary is!

  So I gave her an overview, teaching her how words are alphabetized. We devoted a full lesson to looking up the meanings of words, which also challenged her basic spelling skills and reading comprehension. I’d give her a word she didn’t know, like “tundra” or “allocate” and ask her to find the spelling in the dictionary. After several minutes of fumbling through the pages, she would find the word.

  Kathy’s homework came back differently after that. When I asked her to write sentences, she’d bring me descriptions c
opied directly out of the dictionary, evidence that she was indeed using the book. I started wondering what other resources might expand her base of knowledge and promote more at home practice.

  Mark and I had all kinds of computers in our storage unit, castoffs from our business that were older models and slower processers, but any one of them would be perfect for a person who’d never sat at a computer before. Learning to work a computer was certainly important if Kathy were to become self-sufficient.

  The card catalog in our little town’s library was on a computer system. Driver’s tests were given on a computer here, and government offices used computers to make appointments. Our small schools put basic information and schedules online, and e-mail was the medium of choice for teachers wanting to communicate with parents. The country may be backward in some areas, but citizens here were hooked up like everyone else in America.

  At our next session, I said, “I have an extra computer I could give you to set up at home if you’re interested.”

  Kathy’s eyes grew round. “I’d love a computer. Then my son could do his schoolwork at home like the other kids. Maybe I can learn to work on a computer, too. I’d love to find out how to use the Internet.”

  So the next week I brought her one of our used computers and a small computer desk. I was more than a little confused about where to start. Kathy had forty years of practice steering clear of anything that required reading. She had never had a bank account. Never used an ATM. Never swiped a credit card in a grocery store. Never bought gas outside at the pump. She had never ordered anything online, never looked up merchandise on a store computer, or even plugged in numbers on a jukebox to play her favorite song. Kathy had no clue how a computer worked, didn’t understand what applications were, didn’t know how to move a cursor, couldn’t type, and probably wouldn’t have a clue of how to turn the machine on. Operating a computer was going to be a huge challenge for someone still learning to master a BIC pen.

  So, I bought her the Jump Start and Reader Rabbit programs for levels K-3. I wasn’t allowed to use non-credentialed materials on the college computers which were plunked right in the room we had our lessons, so I brought in my laptop to teach her some preschool game basics. For weeks afterwards, Kathy came to every lesson gushing about how much fun she was having practicing at home, and she confessed she had to fight for computer time with her family, which meant everyone was engaged in learning at home now. She even got the Internet hooked up, which I thought amazing for someone with such limited resources, until I read an article about people in third world countries spending money to build a community Internet station for the village children to gain access to the world before even drilling a well for water. Perhaps the Internet wasn’t a luxury item anymore.

  I was proud to bring Kathy into the technology age, yet sorry too when I imagined her someday wasting hours on YouTube and tweeting with friends, rather than spending her time cooking or reading poetry.

  I couldn’t fight the direction that innovation and progress was taking our world; only act responsibly regarding my own choices. So I swallowed my resistance, and introduced my simple friend to the very same fast-paced technological world that I was trying to escape. Meanwhile, I struggled to understand and embrace the slower, natural world Kathy maneuvered with such grace and acceptance.

  If we met somewhere in the middle, we would probably both be better off.

  The greater part of what my neighbors call good I believe in my soul to be bad, and if I repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good behavior. What demon possessed me that I behaved so well?

  —Henry David Thoreau

  THINGS STAY THE SAME

  More than half of the women in our small town were blonde, with fashionable doo’s that heightened their femininity. They wore impeccable makeup and clothes that were flattering to female curves, kept their nails manicured, had regular pedicures and facials, and used the tanning booth all winter long. Country gals almost seemed compelled to enhance their womanliness as a way of balancing out the raging masculinity of the local men.

  The country boy’s basic attire consists of jeans and a dirty t-shirt, perhaps a cowboy hat or baseball cap to keep the sun off of their tanned skin. Often their hands are stained and their faces sport a day-old growth of beard. The country boys’ fitness levels are impressive, not because these he-men are hanging out in gyms pumping iron, but because their modes of work and recreation tax muscle. The typical day for a country boy includes hunting, training horses, putting up a shed, or working on the truck’s carburetor. This lifestyle makes for a manly man. Stacked up against the girly girls, the population is balanced as a whole.

  Since balance is something Mark and I both craved after years of frustrating imbalance, we found the old-fashioned male and female roles on display endearing, if not downright fascinating. The men ruled the roost at home and the women let them.

  The Southern belle country women, however, were not spoiled housewives such as some we knew in Florida, the type whose husbands made a lot of money and all they had to do was take yoga, get their hair done, and tote the kids around to dance lessons or soccer games. No, the women in the country all worked in female-oriented jobs, as teachers, hairdressers, nurses, or real estate agents. With pay scales low in a small town, the entire family had to pitch in to make ends meet, but since most country females had a disinterest in forging an ambitious career, their focus was taking care of the husband and children.

  Amazingly, the fact that these hard working women made significant financial contributions to the family did not earn them a say in family decisions. The women worked to earn money and secure insurance from stable jobs while the men did piecemeal work in construction, spending the money and making the decisions. When a woman dared voice an objection, her opinion was viewed as anarchy. (“And that’s the way it’s supposed to be in a good, Christian family,” Ronnie explained. “The Bible says so.”)

  Mark admitted he was envious. How nice to be married to a woman who knows her place and allows the man to be the man! There’s comfort in age-old attitudes designed to build up the man’s self-esteem. Happier husbands lead to happier wives. Theoretically, at least.

  Mark’s desire for a traditional marriage dynamic wasn’t because he was unenlightened or chauvinistic, but born from a nagging scar that we’d been nursing as a couple for some 17 years. We operated as virtual equals, not so much because Mark respected me and relished my ambitious nature, but because he had no choice in the matter. Our dynamic had been established at the very beginning.

  When I met Mark, I had just left a viable career as a leading choreographer and dancer in New York. I was the 29-year-old owner of a growing, hugely popular dance school business and I had a home of my own. I was a single parent who earned enough to care for her child responsibly. Mark was my dance student, and barely an adult at 23. He had no job, but quite a bit of debt. He lived with his mother, and had never been employed unless you count waiting tables a few nights a week and teaching an aerobics class. He fantasized about becoming a star, and had no career aspirations aside from acting or being a dancer. I wasn’t really interested in a man who brought so little to the table, but he pursued me diligently and as time went on, my reservations eroded away.

  I was drawn to the unique creative synergy between us. I adored his company. I loved his laugh, his looks, and the way he gave lip service to liberal or new age attitudes, even though he rarely lived the ideals in practice. I loved his arrogance and sense of self-importance, and I excused his spoiled attitude as an unfortunate side effect of his high strung, artistic temperament. I fell, slowly but inevitably, in love with him despite his being so high maintenance.

  I supported him financially for the first year or so that we were a couple, because he had no money. He just wanted to study dance and pursue his passions. Daily, I bought him lunch and let him hang at my place for free. The general attitude for us both was th
at I was the grown up with the business, and he was the young kid “artist” who couldn’t be tied to such worldly anchors as a job. Once we were married with a family to care for, I insisted he start contributing financially. I had no interest at all in being the only breadwinner saddled with an adult dependent, and since he couldn’t come up with anything he wanted to do on his own, he started working at the studio for me. We had a baby, and after some five years, another. As time wore on, Mark had no choice but to grow up and become a key player in my world of endless struggle and responsibility. I shared my business, my home, and my firstborn with him without reservation, but rather than feeling honored or lucky, from the very beginning he resented the weight of responsibility that came with being my partner.

  I considered us equals in every way, but this didn’t change the fact that I was his boss and my name was on everything we owned— mortgage, business, car, etc. This created feelings of inferiority and further resentment on his part. He was my business partner, not just a husband, and he understandably wanted recognition for the sacrifices he was making as a fellow teacher. Unfortunately, I couldn’t relinquish power any more than I could conveniently wipe out my history as the founder of the school since people knew my background as well as his. Mark was exceptionally talented and he made significant contributions to the business, but the fact was, I was the one with a reputation in the dance field, and the one who drove the business and managed our affairs to keep revenue coming in. My stepping aside as the figurehead was never an option, even if I wanted to, which I did not.