Pack Up and Get on With It

One of my favorite, go-to, self-talk phrases: Dad’s famous, under his breath with a cigar stub clenched between his teeth: Quitcherbellyachin.

I didn’t belly ache a lot around my dad. Complaining simply had no currency with him. There was no sympathy, no commiseration. He had no respect for belly aching, so every complaint that found its way to my lips got choked back. He didn’t care if it was too hot to mow the lawn. He wasn’t interested in my not wanting to work in his store on Saturday night. He thought it was his job to watch me struggle to dislodge a treble hook from a northern pike. Got a problem with that?

Cry me a river.

I thought about that this morning while we were closing up our house up north. For heaven’s sake, you are sad because you are having to unplug the refrigerator and take home the jam and salad dressing for the winter? And you can’t come back and be here because the snow will be up to your neck and the pipes will probably burst meaning you will likely have to pee in a bucket because the toilet won’t flush but, after you do, you can watch the herd of deer pick its beautiful way through the snow in front of your house, their heads just visible from your chair in front of the fire, their wildness covering you like a blanket, the ice on the shore built up like a wall against the roar that is Lake Superior in winter? Is that why you are sad? Quitcherbellyachin, girl. Get over yourself. You have this place to come to and it will be here when you are ready to come back.

The conversations we have with ourselves. The old, ageless voices we hear. Aren’t we glad our elders didn’t cradle us in their arms and cry real tears for our troubles? What we wanted ended up not being what we needed. I never saw that coming. But I am grateful just the same.