OUT OF THE LOOP

By Willow Runningwater

“What do you mean, you don’t know what borscht is?” I asked my school friend. We were both about six years old, and we were talking about what we wanted to eat for supper. It was the beginning of my realization that I came from a foreign household. Most of my friends were American, and I was born to two Latvian parents. I soon learned about differences, and that was when I began to realize that I was “out of the loop.”

We ate differently, mostly eastern European food. I loved my mother’s sweet rolls, filled with fried onions and bacon. Pickled beets and herring were always available, as were large loaves of black bread and sweet butter. Our desserts were often babka, a breadlike cake. My German godparents must also have influenced our household, since we often had fried donuts with slices of apple in them. Another favorite was sour cream, which was sweetened and topped strawberries and rhubarb. Our holiday meals were not turkey, but roast goose, which we raised ourselves. My father’s favorite meal was boiled beef with horseradish. Soup was almost always a staple. We had chicken soup occasionally, but more often it was borscht or cabbage soup. My mother’s favorite was something she called milk soup, made with butter, milk, and noodles.

Sandwiches did not appear until I was older, leaving me puzzled when I was asked to have lunch with my friends. At home we always had leftovers served with slices of sour rye or black bread. I never knew what to say when my friends’ parents asked me what I wanted for lunch. First of all, my mother never asked anyone and would have just served what she had. The big-eyed expression on my friends’ faces was a similar reaction to mine when I was in their houses. Yet all of this went unspoken, and I learned that something was oddly different in our household.

I tried to be accommodating, and I remember a time when I was very small. Our tenant was babysitting me while my mother went out. She asked me what I wanted, and I answered, “Spinach.” In my head, I didn’t like most of the food that other people served, so I picked something I didn’t like at all, hoping to please.

My mother spoke English badly most of her life. My friends had no idea what she was saying when she talked. Even when she spoke English, they thought she was talking in a foreign tongue. I dared not laugh because my mother would get angry, and my friends would be embarrassed. She would send my brother or me to the store to get something she wanted or needed. Once she sent me to the drugstore to ask for elephant pills. I dutifully went and was met with great resistance at the store. They had no idea what I wanted. I went home mortified and told my mother, who became enraged and sent me back again. Now I was in a great panic. I was caught between my mother and the drugstore. I went home again in tears and envisioned a life of going back and forth to the store, accomplishing nothing. I felt as if I were caught between two dragons. The third time, she went with me and pointed to the bottle on the shelf. It was Oliphant pills that she wanted.

I quickly learned that my mother’s world was not the same as the world we lived in. But this didn’t daunt her. I cannot count the many awful times these trips to the store were repeated. I was not the only victim. My brother was also sent to the store for impossible items. Years later he remembered these episodes with the same gut-wrenching feelings.

School was a trial for me. It was impossible for me to make my parents understand that they were supposed to go to Open School Night. They refused to go and insisted that I go alone. Arguing with my parents was like arguing with a head of lettuce. No words could convince them that this was something parents were supposed to do. In their minds, it was my job to do things for them. So off to school I went by myself. My teachers acted as if I were lying and hadn’t told my parents to come.

I was called down to the principal’s office once when my teacher saw that I was signing my own report cards. Trouble again! He did not seem to understand that my mother didn’t know how to write. Perhaps this was the reason for a home visit from my teacher. Of course, I didn’t dare get low marks because I was told that I was smart. My parents could not conceive of the idea that they had anything but studious, smart children. To be otherwise would be to fail them. It never occurred to me that my mother or father would not know what my marks were. I simply did what was expected of me.

I managed to grow up and get married. I was an artist as well as a mother and soon began to sell my works and enter art shows. Once again I knew I was out of the loop. I was a female in a male world. I hadn’t noticed that right away. I thought talent was the road to success. But it didn’t take long before I figured out how to solve that problem. I signed my works using only my last name.

This did the trick and got me into places that might have rejected me, but I soon found out that men were very competitive in the art world. They would befriend me and later cut me to ribbons. Oddly enough, it was the men who couldn’t paint as well as I did who gave me the most trouble. I had had enough practice dealing with “being different” during my childhood, so I dug my heels in, without help from the women’s movement, without tearing off my bra and waving flags, and got ahead on my own terms. I thought, “If I’m going to be different, then I’m going to do what I want to do.” I did this for years. I sat by myself and painted. One day I looked behind me and saw that I had a “following.” What a surprise! Maybe my early years had given me the training that I needed. I never fitted into slots anyway. They were like wearing underwear that was much too tight and pinched all the time.

Life goes on, and I went with it, still doing whatever made me happy. In my later years I started to farm as well as paint. It never occurred to me that this was a strange occupation for someone in her fifties. My friends were startled, and, once again, I was faced with people wondering if dementia was setting in. They all came to visit in droves, shaking their heads with disbelief. Farming worked, and so did I. My cholesterol level dropped, and I ate the best organic food. I now have been farming for fifteen years and plan to continue. Once again, going blindly in the direction I wanted was good for me. Many of our friends turned around and began to grow food and animals as well. In fact, that became true of most of them. One year I was ill and couldn’t raise turkeys. To my surprise, a friend arrived with a present of two that he had raised. We had taught him how to farm.

I woke up the other day, thinking about my life. I have always been like a left shoe on a right foot. And here I am again, in my old age, still painting and farming and starting yet another career. I have always wanted to write and never got around to it. But I have waited long enough.

Once more, my friends shake their heads. “She is always out of the loop.”  

 

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