“If you don’t sacrifice for what you want, what you want becomes the sacrifice.”
I have been thinking about this line throughout most of the night. For some of us, especially the ones raised on cereal, sitcoms, and silence…
…what we sacrificed was never a choice.
It was already baked into the deal. Survival meant you figured things out because no one else was going to do it for you.
I’m a Gen X man.
That means I belong to the generation that grew up when the American family was coming apart at the seams. Divorce wasn’t just a statistic, it was a Tuesday afternoon. In my case, it meant my dad was in and out of my life, more gone than present from the time I was ten until I became an adult. He was around for visitation weekends and the occasional man-up moment, but the day to day was handled by my mom. Just the two of us. Beginning on the Southside of Chicago and down to the Broad Ripple neighborhood in Indianapolis.
Let me tell you that my Ma was a pioneer. A divorced woman in the Catholic Church during the 1970s. That wasn’t just rare, it was damn near scandalous. There weren’t support groups or hashtags or blogs. There was shame, judgment, and a whole lot of guilt. My Ma handled it the best she could and didn’t crumble. She went to work, she paid the bills and she raised me the best she could with the tools she had.
While she worked late, I was home alone. I had a key around my neck and a pantry in the kitchen. I vacuumed the carpet, scrubbed the bathtub, made dinner occasionally and learned how to be fine without help.
I wasn’t neglected.
I was entrusted.
I was the man of the house before I had armpit hair.
I didn’t just learn chores.
I learned life.
I learned how to care for a home, how to bake a cake from scratch and how to prune roses without bleeding out. Between my Ma and my Gramma, I was handed every domestic skill a man could ever need. I knew how to fold a fitted fucking sheet, hem a pair of pants and clean the crapper like it was the holy grail. When I needed answers that didn’t come with an instruction manual or I couldn’t ask my mom or her mom, I had Playboy.
I had my first subscription when I was thirteen. I thought I was pulling a fast one on my mom. Decades later, she told me that she knew all along. She was just proud that I paid the bill on time and didn’t let it go to collection like I did with the Columbia House fiasco.
That was her way…
…let me explore on my own, but do it responsibly.
That kind of upbringing shaped me. It made me independent, maybe too independent . Gen X men like me didn’t grow up needing women to survive. We didn’t look for someone to cook, shop, clean or mother us. We already had that covered.
Our emotional needs?
We buried them under sarcasm, sarcasm under humor, humor with carnal knowledge learned in Asa Baber’s column in Playboy magazine.
I didn’t get married until my mid-thirties. Married a woman eleven years younger and who grew up in a house with a maid. That should’ve told me all I needed to know. We played house for a while, like a couple kids with a brand new EasyBake oven. Unfortunately, playtime ended and when it did, I moved back East of Mannheim Road, carrying only what I came with…
…my independence, my life lessons and the echo of a latchkey swinging across my chest.
Today, I’m closer to seventy than forty. I don’t pine for a do-over. I don’t wish I took a different path. I was raised in a crucible that forged men who could live alone, love hard, and walk away if they had to. I may go to my grave as a latchkey kid, but I won’t go bitter. Unless I meet a woman like the one in that John Prine song, “In Spite of Ourselves,’ someone who laughs at my busted wiring and lets me laugh at hers, I’ll stay a latchkey kid just fine.
Because what my Ma taught me, what my Gramma molded for me and what that lonely adolescence instilled in me…
…was how to be whole all by myself.
Me, Han Solo, Eric Carmen and Gilbert O’Sullivan.
It is Tuesday and I’m already in…. in a daydream.
