All right. Sabbatical. Right. So … this actually started almost a week ago. Everyday since I’m reminded of the need to do a little more every day to work on the book. After all, that’s what I said I wanted this time to do. To finish the book. Finish what I started. But just now I wonder if the story I really want to tell isn’t what I have written so far, but maybe something different. Something more elusive and interesting than what I think would interest people. Most of my life I’ve told these stories. Most of them are funny. Some of them aren’t. Ten minute scenes during which my perspective shifted ever-so-slightly. Being disappointed. Being conflicted. Being truly happy. Today there’s something standing between me and those stories. They seem so fabricated. So much the same. So … not what I want to say.
Just now, on the brink of this tale-telling, I am interrupted by memories of my father. He’s everywhere. He’s nowhere. I read a passage in Google Books about the strike of 1967 … clearly one of the longest in the history of labor in the United States, lasting almost eight months. And I think of the day he sat with me on the steps of the Daily Bank Building and told me to take a good hard look at the smeltermen going from the Welfare Office to the bank. The things he said … what did he say, exactly? It was important, I remember. He told me: This is important. But did he tell me, or did I just know?
It was about want. It was about need. It was about not hating the place where you were, or where you came from, but nuturing a dislike for it, so that, when the time came, you could leave and not have to come back. Did he say that? Or did I just remember wanting him to say that? What is that? What is the difference? Why is that conversation so important to me today? Was it then at six years old, that I started to take myself seriously enough to know that I would never, ever, ever, never, ever get stuck doing something I didn’t want to do?
Isn’t it so true that the things we want for ourselves and the things we actually need to survive are so very different? The needs are basic, but the wanting part can get so complicated. So much more than ten minutes on the steps of the bank, in that tiny, tortured town.