Ever have one of those odd moments where you flash back to time in your past w/o any real explanation?
I was standing in my bathroom this morning and had an abrupt flash of a time when I was growing up and still at home in East, TX. I was overcome with a sense of being in two places at once. It was almost as if I could see both scenes overlayed on top of each other. I have no idea what sparked it but it was a bit jarring.
I started thinking about how much my life has changed since then and how very different I live. While I’m by no means wealthy, I lived very different back then. And while there were times I went w/o things I wanted, I can’t remember many times of going w/o things I needed. I grew up very poor in the boonies of East TX. My family moved from Louisiana to Texas when I was young. They actually moved from a small town to an even smaller & very remote town. lol
Looking back at the memory, it felt foreign. I probably don’t need to say my home was very cluttered and somewhat disheveled. lol I’m not making fun just stating fact. I didn’t know any better at time. I thought everyone lived the way we did. My parents weren’t hoarders but they tended to keep a lot of unnecessary stuff. I guess this might be part of how different the memory felt.
It’s funny how life changes around us and we sort of forget how different things can be. People to this day still don’t always believe me when I explain how I grew up. I admit, it sounds almost alien. It was like one step above the TV show, The Beverly Hillbillies. [1]prior to their getting rich. lol People still laugh when I tell them we had a washing machine with a crank. We had an outhouse at one time. We had a “frigadere” specifically for fresh kill before it was skinned and cut up for sale or food. (It sat on the back porch) Our a/c was a giant industrial fan mounted in the ceiling. Our heater was a wood burning stove. We never had cable. We didn’t have a phone. [2]My parents got one at some point after my 18th birthday but before my 22nd one. I had been long gone from home before then. Our water was a self-drilled well. The only thing we got from the city was electricity. And that went out every time a thunderstorm came thru, which was often. We grew our own vegetables and slaughtered our own meat. We only bought things we couldn’t readily produce (or didn’t want to). Before my foster mom died, she even made all of our clothes. For me, it was my way of life. I didn’t know different until I got older and discovered people lived in different ways. Not everyone had a separate fridge just for hunting. lol Nor did everyone have their own personal little bear logo stitched on their clothes. (My mom had a logo for each of us.)
I look at my life now and then and it’s literally like two different people. Many of the modern coveniences I’ve come to take for granted were unheard of back then. I mean how did I live before the internet, Google, Netflix, email, smartphones, etc!? Ironically, we did live and we did ok. In some ways, I think it made me more well-rounded. I can say for sure it makes me appreciate the things I do have today more.
Hey, I grew up and live in the same city. But we had a wood stove too, as my dad thought natural gas was too expensive. I hated splitting wood for that thing too. I was never a winter person – instead I loved that first day I could go back into the pool and I'd spend my life in that pool from about the end of May to the second week of October before it got too brutally cold outside.
So yes, just a little privileged growing up.
And some of us still live in a similar fashion. Although I think I had the opposite experience you did. I started out in a wealthy home in a big city with an excess of everything. Then after college, I moved to what would relatively be the hills/sticks and definitely a "decrease" in the standard of living. And yet I feel better for it now looking back. Of course, I have technology, but a lot of people who would come visit would probably consider us somewhat… "backwards".
Jarring, but what's even more jarring is when you're dreaming and look in a mirror and someone else entirely is looking back at you. Never fails to jolt me awake.