Integrity: A Work In Progress

Sigh.

“The building has strong integrity,” Mary Klein, of Eau Claire, Wisconsin, said to me as we looked out the sunroom window to the red barn past the backyard lawn. I frowned, she chuckled and was quick to add more.

       

“I know it doesn’t look like it, but the structure of the building is very strong; and the interior is mostly new,” she said. 


(names, besides the writer's, have been changed)

I never did get to see the inside of the barn, the old animal and hey building they made into a “home away from home”. There wasn’t enough time between the Asian and Middle American party preparations. A farewell for my friend, who was moving back to Japan after graduating from college, this party was an odd combination of East meets West and all the people in-between. Translating Japanese to English and vice versa with my mediocre abilities was my only problem that day; that and I was losing a constant friend, again. But the wide open space of a farm in rural Wisconsin was a nice change from the busy streets of Minneapolis. Then there was the family, oh the family.

       

The Kleins, meaning Joe and Mary Klein, were retired, had no children, and had no cares whatsoever. Honestly, they had the appearance of the ordinary; plain clothing and faces which looked like the next blonde, blue-eyed person. You wouldn’t expect much; They insisted that their way of doing things didn’t come without hardship, everything took that much longer. Yet, I couldn’t help but put them up on that pedestal when I only had a family in my separate hand to compare them with. In that moment, they were everything I wasn’t.

They owned a large plot of land with a large three story farm house and a large two story barn. They were great believers in doing things from scratch. They caught, skinned, up and smoked their own meats, pickled their own veggies; and when they couldn’t do it, there was always a friend down the road who could lend some of their own. Pies were made from scratch, spices collected from their garden. They composted illegally and were proud of it, and they spent their spare time reading books in their sunroom or tending the garden out back.

       

In one day, they put me to shame. They put me to work. I kneaded dough and mixed mixes that would soon become biscuits and pies. So in the moment, I didn’t have the time to recoil from all the new information being thrown at me. I was so far removed from the two minute chicken and pasta dinners I usually made. I didn’t even touch the microwave that day.

    

I felt useful, productive, content. For several hours I knew I wanted a big farm house in Wisconsin when I was older. I didn’t think of all that came with owning all they had, what they must have spent, monetary and emotionally to end up where they are; I didn’t think of it. I wanted that house. I wanted that family. I wanted to be that family. All that they were, all their beautiful insides, was something I didn’t understand. I couldn’t, I just didn’t have the context. What did they have that kept them together? What was it that made two people have a rational understanding of each other? Rational enough so they could emote accordingly.

       

My parents were hot in their younger years. There are still traces of this hotness, with only a little pudge. Yeah, they’re still a catch. Too bad they couldn’t keep a hold of each other.

    

My father: blonde, blue-eyed, outgoing, boisterous. He was a fox when he was my age. He pursued my mother, who was dark skinned, remote, and pragmatic, with zeal you only see in people who are deeply in love. They seemed the perfect balance for each other, but they were too alike in the flaw of too little communication. The divorce papers were signed and official before my younger sister could remember it. All that was left was a broken home, a broken family, and two little girls who didn’t know which way to be and didn’t look like any of the pink-skinned people around them.

    

There is no “whole” in my vocabulary. My sister and I were ferried between two houses every week until I left for college. We literally lived out of paper bags and suitcases. We were bag ladies. I laugh now. Our rooms never gained the touches of adolescent care. Any posters of Jonathan Taylor Thomas had to come down so we could post them in our other rooms at the other house. It was too much of a hassle; I ripped my poster when I tried to peel the duct tape off the wall anyway, so why bother?

       

It only took me one day to discover the integrity in the Klein home. After seventeen years of being a broken family I have yet to see integrity in what happened. We looked, we look okay on the outside now, but our structural integrity is shot to shit.

       

So when Mary Klein asked the usual starter questions, I sighed.

       

“Are you from here?” she asked.

       

“No,” I said, shaking my head, “Minneapolis, born and bred.”

       

“Oh, that’s great! So are you living on your own? At home?”

       

Yeah, right now I’m living with my dad, at his house. It’s the house I grew up in from year one to year eight. Then my parents broke their vows and parted, and then I moved to my mom’s house, for a week. Then I moved back to my dad’s, for a week. I lived like that from year nine to year eighteen. Now, I have to feel guilty about living at one house while the other is alone in their own house. Yeah, it’s kind of complicated.

       

As if. What a whiner I would sound like.

       

“Yeah, living at home. I would like to get my own place, but I just don’t have the money for it yet,” I said.

       

“Oh well, it’ll happen soon. Just keep plugging away!” she said. I laughed, out of courtesy. It’s a touchy subject.

    

My last year in high school, I had a talk with the guidance counselor about my future, every student had to. My mom, always very present in anything I had to do with education, invited herself to the meeting and laid out which colleges I had in mind, and which ones she thought were best. The chat eventually went down the road of emotional well-being. Of course guidance counselor asked the expected question.

       

“Do you ever feel upset over the divorce? I mean, do you get depressed about it?”

       

My mom and I exchanged glances and we smiled, shook our heads.

       

“No, I don’t think so,” my mom said as she chuckled.

       

The chat moved on.

       

If I was a smarter kid then, I would have said, “Yeah. Yeah, I do.” I would have spoken up and stopped denying my own integrity. The integrity to speak for myself in that meeting, the audacity to push back against an imaginary glass wall between my family. I would have pushed so hard that the cracks already there would have broken down to reveal what was, is, still raw. But I did nothing.

       

As I announced that I had to make the long drive back to Minneapolis, the Kleins didn’t miss the opportunity to load me up with food and goodies for weeks to come. I received a hug from both of them and the assurance that I was always welcome, even though I knew it was the last time I would see that house. Without Kana to latch onto, I would have no reason to ever go back to that place. 

The integrity of the Klein’s homestead is breaking down that glass wall. I make the choice to have my own sense of integrity, or at least what I can make of it now. What does integrity mean? To have choice over your actions, over you mind? Is such a thing possible. It is impossible to feel rationally, so I must feel ardently and see where my insides, no matter how broken, lead me. My mind will follow; I hope. I ask.

       

Where is my homestead?

    

Where are my beautiful insides and how do I maintain that interior once found?

-Lorna Hanson