Papers in a box

I took an accidental trip down memory lane yesterday while cleaning out a few boxes in the family room. These were just lidless cardboard boxes that were living in the basement of the Old House when we moved here and ended up in a corner in the family room where there is still a motley collection of random things that I either don't have a place for or simply don't want to deal with. Or both. One because of the other, if you see.

So, anyway, I was going through these boxes - one was mostly cards and office supplies and random things that made me go, "oh THERE that is," like my old rubber stamp that shows a fish with big, puckered lips and says, "Sealed with a fish."  

The other box had papers of all kinds - old scripts and playbills, letters and cards, old angsty poetry, the journal that I wrote in on stage when I played Cecily in The Importance of Being Earnest. There were also actual journals, full of the obligatory prose of teenage pain and anguish, and a shoebox labeled, "Heather's letters" with myriad letters from friends; some in date-stamped envelopes, some on binder paper folded to look like hearts and arrows, some with lipstick kisses, some with big lettering on the front that say, "WITH UNDIEING [sic] LOVE FROM YOUR TEDDY BEAR MATT."

*sigh* I wonder if the poor fella still burns...

Probably.

Anyway, I sat there for hours, totally engrossed in my journal and the letters - it was fun. I made piles and piles, and they're all still there of course. I did throw away a big box of stuff but a lot of it is going in a box to keep. One of the things I found was a letter from my step-mom Deborah, dated June 12, 1996. It was written a few days after my high school graduation and it's probably been that long since I read it. As I read it, I missed Deborah with an intensity that I haven't felt since her passing almost 9 years ago. I've missed her many, many times over the years, sometimes at the oddest moments - I've had moments where I just wished I could talk to her, get her perspective, and moments where I simply craved the serenity of her company. Her home was a place of peace and quiet for me. Her voice was calm and her manner was gentle and unfeigned. She had her struggles, of course, she was human - but she was a strength to me, and a refuge and I missed her so much reading her letter. It was a happy, peaceful kind of sadness, if you know what I mean.

I decided to post this letter so you could all maybe get a little glimpse of why she means so much to me, and because the letter is meaningful to me again, at this stage in my life - I don't believe that it was an accident that I found it now.

"Dear Heather,

Amid all the cliches and pieties that were spoken at the ceremony yesterday, I thought the oft-repeated, "this is a beginning," was more true than even the speakers realized. Particularly I thought it was true of you.

You will now begin to govern your own life. This after a lifetime of adult betrayals too numerous to name. Some of the betrayals were dramatic, and some were merely quiet and cowardly - showing Ace Ventura instead of holding class. Despite this, you have managed to retain trust in the few adults who have not led you astray - at least not on purpose, and to retain that most important of all human qualities - a good heart.

In a world that has presented you with few role models, you must invent or find your own. This is hard, but it is not impossible (for example, when I looked for a model of motherhood, I sought one in the children's books of Madelyn L'Engle, and even in Mister Rogers' Neighborhood). There are models in books and in history and in quiet streets. And you can look for them in your imagination. Go ahead and daydream about the woman you would like to become. How would she spend her days? How would she talk to her mother or sisters? What music would she listen to? What books would move and shape her? How would she approach the first few steps of governing her own life?

It is thrilling and frightening to be in charge. It is also hard to realize. I think a part of me still expects someone to figure out a better way for me to live and arrange it all for me. I think I'm still looking in bookstores for some obscure title: Deborah, This is How You Do It. It is hard to keep in mind that you have the greatest stake in your own happiness and that you must seriously consult that inner voice of your best self to see if you are really keeping your truest happiness in mind.

It is also hard not to look for the well-worn paths, when so often I think it is the little-trodden one that leads to the interesting part of the forest. Tessa, for example, will likely follow an odd little set of stepping stones covered with ivy to begin her way to a peculiar and satisfying life of restoring old gardens. Your path may be less picturesque - or more so - but I don't think it will have running shoe tracks all over it. Maybe just a sandal print here and there, perhaps a fancy high-heel mark, and maybe the echo of jingle bell socks. That's how you'll know it's yours.

And when you do recognize it, by all means, leap, happy-dance, trudge and moan and sing your way along it. Don't let anything stop you from being Heather Aline-y Bean. Now is the time, my dear little elf, to do it by yourself. *

But if you need any help, know there are some of us on the sidelines cheering. Maybe some of us, like your Grandma Webb, are more extroverted and call out, "Heather!" with gusto, but others of us, your Mom, Tessa, Kyla and me - to name a few - we're watching intently with hope and faith and love.

Yours, Deborah"


When I finished the letter I got the distinct feeling that she is still watching with faith and hope and love. It brought me a lot of peace and a feeling of thankfulness for Deborah and others in my life who have really seen me - past and present :)


* When I was little, someone (it may have been Deborah) called me Heather the Elf. As I was a pill about letting anyone help me (yes, I've always been that way), this little rhyme came to be: "I'm Heather the Elf and I'll do it by myself!" I don't know if I made it up or if someone made it up for me, but there it is. I was probably 3 or 4 when it began.

Who's in love?

This girl.

Politics (or, Why I'm a Libertarian)

For years in our society, there was this unspoken rule that polite people don't discuss politics, which led to the sad state of only rude loud-mouths discussing it publicly. Happily, things are changing. Before my separation, I was getting pretty involved in politics and I posted about it occasionally - mostly campaigning for Mike Lee. After the divorce, I turned inward a lot and this past year I haven't really been able to even think about it. However, my life is wonderfully, amazingly different than it was a year ago and I'm again feeling the intellectual and patriotic pull to get informed and involved. So this is a head's up that I will probably be posting political stuff more and more, and as a lot of my friends and I don't agree politically (which is okay), this is also a head's up that some of you may be offended by it. Fortune, however, has blessed me with open-minded friends who, though they may disagree, will (I think) discourse politely and (one hopes) not swear at me as they disagree :)  

So, while I am not currently informed on any specific issues, I thought I'd briefly explain my political beliefs, in case anyone is interested or wants some background to anything I may post.

For most of my voting years, I voted a straight Republican Party ticket. I wasn't informed on issues or candidates and I figured a straight party ticket was a safe bet. Yes, I am partly responsible for Bush.2 and I apologize. I don't know exactly when, but some time before the last presidential election I started educating myself politically. And, no, that doesn't translate to "I started listening to Glenn Beck," lol. I read the Constitution. I read John Locke. I read Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington and the likes. I read Ayn Rand. Then, John Stossel and Milton Freidman; I started reading Townhall, Reason, Cato Institute, etc, and, yes, eventually I got in to Glenn. I realized I wasn't "conservative," and, in fact, conservatives kind of started to bug me. I didn't know what I was. Randy would come home, having listened to the radio all day, and tell me something "that kook Ron Paul” had said and I would think, "that doesn't sound crazy to me." Eventually, I ended up joining a local Davis County political group where I joined in (and started) several awesome arguments on the message board, went to some meetings, campaigned for Mike Lee, met with politicians, started figuring out local politics, etc. It was eye opening and I really enjoyed it.
 

So, after all of my learning and reading, I decided I align most with libertarianism – if you can stick an “ism” on libertarians, lol. I believe in the complete freedom of the individual to do with his life whatever he chooses, so long as he does not interfere with the rights of others. Pure and simple. What if he wants to smoke dope or drop acid? Yes, I believe drugs should be legalized. What if he wants to visit a woman willingly employed as a sex worker? Yes, as immoral and damaging as I find the practice, I believe prostitution should be legalized. I don’t believe that it is the right or responsibility of government to regulate morality. For one thing, morality is subjective and for this reason, a man’s morality must be his own individual responsibility. Furthermore, nothing in the Constitution gives the government the right to control how a citizen chooses to treat his own body. Of course, there must always be laws protecting citizens from one another, but it is the height of arrogance for any government to assume that it has any right to protect a citizen from himself and sheer insanity for the citizen to relinquish that control to a government.
 

This brings me to an issue that divides libertarians, often along religious lines - that of abortion. Some libertarians will join the voice of liberals saying, “a woman’s body, and everything in it, are hers to do with as she chooses,” (though generally this argument applies only to abortion. If she chooses to willingly marry a man who already has a wife, homeschool her kids, smoke pot, or even eat too much fat or salt, the government will have to stop her) including the abortion of an unborn – or in some cases, a newborn – baby. I disagree. Every woman does indeed have a choice, but in my opinion, the choice comes far sooner in the equation than some give allowance for. All women know that pregnancy can be a side-effect of sex. Therefore, whenever she engages in sex, whether she is married or single, whether it is committed love making or a one-night stand, a woman accepts the possibility that she will get pregnant. That is when the choice is made. That is when she is still making choices for her own body. When a new life is created, her choice is past. She is now dealing with a separate human being, an individual with its own heartbeat, its own brain, its own unique DNA, its own future, and she does not have the right to end that life simply because it begins as a helpless fetus.


Some women do not get to make the first choice. There are women who are the victims of crimes, violent or otherwise, that steal their first choice from them. As much as I would hope that these women would deliver their babies and send them to families who want them, I believe they should retain their right to their first choice and still have humane abortion as a legal option. I have read accounts of women who have delivered a baby born of violent assault and have found the birth to be as traumatic as the violation they endured. I believe in a just and loving God; I don’t believe He would want His daughters to suffer such a thing if it could be avoided.


My next topic may be even more controversial than the last. Abortion seems to have lost some of its controversy through being so continuously controversial, but education is the sacred cow that no one touches without reproof. So, here we go: I do not believe in compulsory education. I do not find that education is the proper province of government (Federal or local) and I think its role in education should be completely done away with, and all government funding of education should cease. I fully believe that the free market (a truly free market, not the kind we have now) would take over and education would improve drastically. With true competition, schools would be numerous, affordable, and innovative. For those who couldn’t afford school, charities, churches and entrepreneurs (free from government restraint) could provide much service. Homeschooling would also continue to be an excellent option available to anyone who had the time and desire.


There’s the argument, of course, that some people would choose not to educate their children at all. That is certainly true, but it happens now with the existing system so I don’t find it to be a valid argument against the abolishing of compulsory education laws. Especially since I find the idea that schooling equals education to be a total fallacy.


Education funding brings me to taxes. I see taxation as a necessary evil. I do expect the governments, both state and federal, to perform the functions assigned to them in the US Constitution and the various state constitutions. To do this, they need funding from the citizens. I do not approve of property taxation of any kind. I can’t decide between the other tax options – a flat tax, wherein every citizens pay the same rate, with no exemptions, deductions or exceptions, or some form of consumption tax – I welcome opinions and information from either camp if you have strong feelings. I certainly don’t think that there should be both an income tax and a consumption tax – one or the other, thank you.
 

Alright, I’ve covered drugs, prostitution, abortion, education and taxes…how shall I offend you all next? That’s probably good for now. A few last general things: I would love to see our government roll back to its original, Constitutionally-appointed size and scope. Don’t know what that is? Read the Constitution and Bill of Rights - and some people will even argue that the Bill of Right isn’t even necessary, that the Constitution in and of itself covers everything. I don’t have an opinion on that one, believe it or not. Not at this point in my life, anyway.


I have heard the argument that the Constitution isn’t adequate for our day because the Founding Fathers couldn’t possibly have foreseen all of our problems. Are we really so arrogant as to believe that our present-day issues are unique to modern-day America? Any student of history will know that is not the case - and our Founders were great students of history. They had seen the patterns unfold throughout the centuries of written history and again in their own mother countries. They knew the way to prevent the evils of the past from happening again - by protecting the freedom of the individual to shape his own destiny, and the Constitution does that. The problem is not with the document, it’s with the citizens who have allowed themselves to be led away from its principals of liberty.



So, that’s my kooky libertarianism in a nutshell (intentional nut reference for those of you who now think I am one).