Received an email yesterday that asked: "Are you really a garbage man's daughter?" Although I love the metaphorical baggage associated with garbageman's daughter and I think it would be a great synonymn for "trailer trash," I am indeed a daughter of a garbageman and my dad was a son of a garbageman. And when my oldest son eventually runs for public office and I'm writing his speeches, he'll be "the grandson of a garbageman." I think it will be a effective way to show blue collar roots and to connect with the Joe Plumbers and Joe Six-Packs of his day. (Remember, John Edwards constantly referred to himself as a son of a mill worker opposed to scum-bag corporate lawyer who cheats on long-suffering wife battling cancer).
Anyway, please don't feel sorry for me or my family.
Bag after bag of trash paved my way to go to a swank private college, study in England, and have a fantastic wardrobe in my high school and college days (some of which is still in my closet just so I can periodically see how big my butt has gotten since the age of 16).
Now as an adult, I am proud that Williams Santiation has been in business for more than 70 years in a town about 70 minutes from where I grew up, and almost no one from my childhood days knows that my trademark pomposity did not come from a blueblood upcoming.
In a Gatsby-like style, I wanted to create an heir of mystery about my upbringing and when that didn't work, I outright lied. One time on a date with a guy from a prominent family in a surrounding community, I said my dad was a convenience store owner. I wanted to give him a respectable clean, non-smelly career that did not require a college education.
For most of my youth, I concealed my dad's profession until it worked in my favor to exploit it, like in the case of the college entrance essay. I wanted to go to a college where students were either rich or smart and since I was neither, it was time to flaunt those humble roots in hopes of pity in the form of a scholarship. My hero, My dad was a cheesey exercise in heart-string tugging and humility; a plea to have a life of books and knowledge and not filth and foul-odors. My shameless explotation worked, and I got my scholarship.
Hmmm, when you have roots this humble, how else can they be exploited?
My sentiments exactly! My father was a garbageman all of his adult life at the City Shed in Columbia, SC. You can probably appreciate the courage it took for me to overcome my shame about my father's occupation. Consequently, Letting Go of Shame was the first book I wrote in The Garbage Man's Daughter series.
ReplyDeleteAfter years of college and work in a profession that I loved, I spent six years writing to tell the world how God is the real garbageman who tells us to cast all our cares upon Him for he cares for us. Letting go of our shame, secrets, stress, and scars to allow God to take them away frees us from that unhealthy stuff.
Now I realize that my biological father performed a wonderful service to humanity. He removed whatever people were willing to let go of, and he never brought it back again.