BULLETS
I learned two habits of thinking from my
stepfather: how to be a bleeding-heart liberal and how
not to be a fragile flower. The first arose from
countless dinner-table arguments among my Irish Catholic
family, stoked by Leo Kennedy, former priest and son of
a dead coal miner. Also a big man who did all his own
work on the house, he enlisted me as brick-toter,
nail-hammerer, tile-gluer
C
a cross between surgery nurse and tool belt. I held the
light while he crawled under the house. I held the
window while he nailed in the molding. I staggered under
the weight of the new gutter while he called,
AHold
it steady! Nobody likes a girl who=s
a fragile flower.@
While I moaned and whined at the abuse
then, it shaped my thinking that Leo thought that I
could do. That I could be strong. That he gave me
a toolkit for high school graduation, which became my
ticket to popularity
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or at least, frequent friendly visitors
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in my freshman dorm. I knew how to check my oil like I
knew that the poor and unions should be taken care of. I
knew I could bring a black man home for dinner, but
never a conservative. I felt righteous in my love of
animals, in my conviction that hunting is wrong, that
guns are tools of violence and that only the old, stuffy
and mentally moribund could disagree with these
principles. I learned my dinner table lessons well.
Which is why Leo wouldn=t
understand why I=m
learning to use a gun. |
