Like many people who grew up in dysfunctional, abusive families, I don’t really like the holidays. Even normal, sane families go through stress around the decorating and gift buying and the unsatisfied expectations. For the broken family it becomes a hell.
One of the things my mother did to relieve the tension was to send my father out hunting. It got him out from underfoot while the work was being done and tired him out so he didn’t have as much energy to rampage if things didn’t go right. Where I grew up men hunting on Thanksgiving and Christmas was pretty common, so other women must have used that ploy as well. It caused me to wonder how many of our customs are sneaky ways for women to keep men busy and out of the way.
Many years ago I remember reading about an anthropologist or some other scientist type person asking a Navajo woman why the Navajo women allowed themselves to become enslaved by their men. The woman looked confused and the scientist told her that the women do the cooking, cleaning, gardening, weaving, herding . . .almost all the tasks are done by the women, while the men sit around and smoke or go out hunting. She continued to look at him quizzically but said, “But the men aren’t fit to do our work.”
That’s a serious paraphrase of the article, but I hope it conveys the gist. In any case, it was an epiphany for me, because it’s true! The west just puts an odd slant on it and makes women think they are forced to be “enslaved” when, in fact, we don’t WANT men in our business.
Come on, women who rise up in ire at this, how many of you WANT a man screwing around in your kitchen?
Anyway, when I was too young to help in the kitchen, I often went hunting with my father. I actually like hunting–the walking, the stalking, the watching–it’s the killing part I hate. So I was quite content to follow along behind him, proud bearer of the various bits he might need like ammo and the hunting knife. The hunting knife that would be the cause of my first, and still most traumatic, lie.
I must have been four or five. I’m leaning toward four because I did not have my own rifle yet and I got that my fifth Christmas. We set out on Thanksgiving morning for a perfect hunting day, it had just snowed and that would make tracking easier. As was always the case, I was taken to a safe place and told to wait while he scouted the area.
So there I was, alone, with the incredibly enticing brand new hunting knife. The knife I had been told on pain of death, not to remove from its sheath. So, of course, I gently slipped it out to gaze upon its beauty. Shiny, sharp and sleek. It was a lovely simple little skinning knife. Then suddenly, and sound in the brush startled me and I jammed it back into the sheath. It was so sharp it went right though the sheath and into my hands. I corrected it and stood there looking at the blood, unsure what to do. The cut through the leather seemed invisible to my eyes and I wondered if anyone would notice.
I never made a peep, just waiting, holding my hand, until my father returned. He was quite distraught and asked me what had happened. I looked at the knife. I looked at him. And I lied. I said I had cut myself on the thistles I was hiding in.
The lie cut my heart worse than the knife had cut my hand. They say children don’t know right from wrong until they are eight or nine. I knew that what I was doing was wrong and my heart burned inside and the tears I was crying were not from physical pain but from mental anguish. But the truth would have gotten me beaten and I was a child and afraid of the anger of my parents.
So we went home. I don’t recall whether I needed stitches or whether it was minor enough that they just wrapped it up. I did live in fear for a few days that he would figure out my lie and there would still be a beating. I got it past Mom, who was much smarter than Dad. And after a while when nothing happened I figured I had outsmarted them . But I never forgot that lie and I made a pact with myself that I would not lie to protect myself again.
Many, many years later I was helping my mother move stuff and came across the knife. Surprisingly, the cut in the sheath was still barely visible and I could believe he never noticed it or associated it with that day. I thought about asking to have it, but then decided not to. It had already done its job, I grew up to be a fanatically honest person, I didn’t need to have it to remind me.
Related posts:
- Place related post plugin php here...
You must be logged in to post a comment.
