“We Knew You Would Find Another Way”

I always like to notice what I am noticing.

Recently it was variations on headlines suggesting we are becoming a less literate society, in part, because we do more scrolling than reading. I began to sit with the question of whether that is true for me?

My spouse, Deborah, and I have a sweet habit of reading a novel together out loud, in addition to whatever each of us might be exploring individually. I’m usually the one who does the reading because I have a knack for falling asleep at the sound of her voice. We recently finished Barbara Kingsolver’s Pulitzer-winning book, “Demon Copperhead,” a story about the effects of the opioid crisis in Appalachian Virginia.

As for what we explore individually, for Deborah you can bet it’s one of the books in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series of fantasy novels. But for me, I had fallen into a bad habit of scrolling. Instagram’s algorithm is so damn good at feeding you what you like to watch, so I get a steady diet of cute animals, bloopers of people falling and crashing into things, couples doing synchronized dance routines, and baseball’s greatest plays.

But do I truly enjoy the habit of winding down at night in this way? I don’t think so. What is actually going on in my brain when I am scrolling? Why does 1 hour feel like 15 minutes? When I stopped to think about it (and the shame-inducing screen time reports that my phone sends me weekly), the overwhelming feeling is that of stolen time. I get lost in an app that gives me a few giggles from the ingenuity of humans. But really, I am allowing technology to harvest my attention for their private gain. And I definitely do not feel richer for doing it.

I don’t mean I’m deleting Instagram and never going to find myself laughing at or sharing a video. But I am bringing more mindfulness to how I want to end my day. So I recently returned to reading. A good old-fashioned book where I physically turn pages. I love the convenience and lighting on my Kindle app, but I look at screens all day for work and I can tell my eyes and brain could use a break from that type of stimulation.

So last weekend I stood in front of my bookshelf to examine the novels I have not yet read and thumbed across some selections from Ann Patchett, an author who is always sure to please me. I pulled down, “The Dutch House,” and started my adventure into another world. This essay is not about that book, per se – though I highly recommend you read it. Rather, it’s about a few strings of awareness I was able to untangle from my own life as I reflected and integrated the teaching moments from the book.

It’s a compelling story about two siblings, Maeve and Danny Conroy, whose mother abandons the family for her personal need to serve the poor in India while their emotionally distant father raises the children with a stepmother who kicks them out of the home when the father dies unexpectedly. The home is an ostentatious relic from new world wealth that the father purchased as a surprise gift for his first wife when he finally crawled out of poverty with his own successful real estate investments. Except, of course, the wife who serves the poor hates the home and all it represents, so she leaves; the home is why the second wife came calling and would not go. The Dutch House and its memories are what bonds the siblings throughout their formative years as they regularly drive to the old neighborhood and sit in a parked car in front of their evicted childhood home and smoke cigarettes, processing what was and what could have been. The house represents a clinging to the past, an attachment to being wronged, and the unraveling of life when it stays stuck in an old story.

Any time I get close to finishing a book, I experience both an anticipation to finish and a dread that the story will come to an end. I love that feeling. And I love making meaning from a story. I think that’s why reading is so much more enriching for me than getting sucked into social media. Scrolling is like eating junk food. It tastes good in the moment, but the empty calories are not satisfying. Reading feels more like digesting a delicious and healthy meal.

So after concluding the story a couple days ago, I have allowed its intriguing through lines to dance around with me and my life. While I clean the chicken coop, I think about whether I have any circumstances where I cling to the past. As I go for my bike ride, I contemplate my attachments to being wronged. All of these thoughts are allowed to exist. I don’t try to name them until they join together with more clarity. As it happened, that moment came while I was doing the dishes: Is the valedictory scholarship my Dutch House?

The first big goal I ever remember setting for myself was graduating at the top of my high school class. It wasn’t just about being the best. I was keenly aware that not only had no one in my family ever attended college, but also that our finances were stretched from my father’s years of working as a union welder who often was on strike over labor disputes at his factory. The valedictorian won a generous scholarship.

Only after we graduated did I learn that I did not receive a scholarship. It was awarded to the salutatorian and the girl who was third in our class. I was devastated. How could this be? I knew the educators so well who were on the scholarship committee. I knew they respected me. Why would I be the only valedictorian in the history of my high school not to win the scholarship?

This is all before email addresses and cell phone numbers. It wasn’t easy to know how to contact teachers over summer break. I finally had an opportunity to run into one of the members of the committee while out on a walk around my small town one day. Rather than engaging in idle chit-chat or niceties, I was very stern and direct and asked what had happened, why didn’t I win the scholarship? Mr. McDonald looked startled at first, like he had no idea why I would be so upset. His answer, given with genuine respect but maybe now with a trace of regret, was, “We all know you, Heather, and how capable you are. We knew you would find another way. We felt like it was more urgent to support other students.” I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. I guess I appreciated the backhanded compliment, but how could they not have known that that scholarship felt like a reward for the hard work of graduating with the best grades? And the salt in the wound was that the financial burden we carried as a union family was quite the opposite situation for one of the other students who was given a scholarship – her father had crossed the picket line. So great, a scab’s family garnered more sympathy than our sacrifices.

That bitter taste still lingers in my mouth some thirty-five years later.

I dry my hands from the dish soap and have a seat in my leather chair overlooking the view of our creek and my favorite Cedar tree and ask myself again, “Is this my Dutch House?”

To be clear, I’m not equating the loss of a scholarship to the abandonment of a mother or being kicked out of your home by a ruthless stepmom. But the ruminating. That felt a little familiar. I can say that Deborah and I have done the equivalent of parking outside the home and chain smoking cigarettes while processing the ways the world has felt like it went against me when I thought I deserved to win – whether it be scholarships, endorsements, legislative initiatives, or elections.

As a farmer, I like to find the seed of something. What’s the origin story of a wound that keeps getting triggered? Which makes me wonder, was the scholarship committee’s verdict a prophecy or a curse? Did they accurately sense my capabilities or install an operating system?

With the benefit of hindsight, I can see that I took all of my rage from being passed over and funneled it into creative searches for scholarships and experiences I would have never found without being forced to figure out a new way. I found other scholarships that helped cover a substantial portion of my tuition, but still I remained with student loan debt. However, I was fortunate to join the inaugural class of the AmeriCorps national service program. Being a part of something bigger than myself – a commitment to “Get Things Done” for America! – was all the enticement I needed to serve; however, the stipend for student loan repayment certainly sweetened the experience. For the four years I served, I was placed with the I Have a Dream Foundation and had a remarkable experience tutoring and mentoring at-risk youth. The impact I had on the students’ lives was equally matched by the ways that they, too, changed me.

But if we go back to the allegory of being in the parked car in front of the Dutch House, one haunting question posed by Deborah after a long drag on her cigarette has been, “Do you think that experience with the scholarship installed a belief in you that you always have to do everything on your own?”

I’m going to need another pack of cigarettes before I can answer that one.