This week, the Netflix movie "Hillbilly Elegy" was recommended to me. I was told that I would love it, so I watched it tonight -- and I was so overcome with that terribly weird mixture of grief and joy by the end that I sat and stared out of my dorm window and cried.
A little bit of a synopsis for "Hillbilly Elegy" is needed. The movie's main character, J.D. Vance, grows up with "hillbilly" family. The movie begins with showing his beginnings in Ohio and Kentucky, and switches over to his life now at Yale. This continues throughout the movie, showing backstory bits and pieces along with his current struggles he's dealing with as a grad student who has a drug-addicted mother. The movie was inspired by a true story.
I certainly was not a "hillbilly" child. I had no drug-addicted parents. I had a picture-perfect childhood in comparison to what J.D. went through. Really, my life is not very comparable to J.D.'s at all, and I won't say exactly why because I would give too many spoilers away.
The reason I became so overwhelmed with all the feelings at the end was because this movie immediately made me think of my parents and a few other particularly special people in my life.
I thought about how my dad started out in life. He was my grandparents' firstborn kid, born in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1962. I don't think (based off of what he had always told me) that he had a really hard childhood or anything, but he didn't have anything handed to him -- like many children prior to the 2000s. He worked with my papaw, I think, from the time that he could reach a gas pedal and be able to haul mobile homes. When he was in high school, he used to skip classes so that he could work the baseball fields. His next job was to help lay sewer tanks down, digging holes and hauling wheelbarrows of rock up and down trailers. He was a hard worker. Anyone who knew Dad would easily say, "That Keith was a hard worker."
And then after my dad, I thought about how my mom started out. Mom's childhood was a little different from Dad's -- she worked for her parents' business, doing bookkeeping from a young age. As a teenager, she moved out of her parents' house and took her younger sister with her even. Almost her whole life, aside from when she was a stay-at-home mom, she has worked. Now, she works long days in a chair that hurts her back and an office that is about as big as a closet -- still being an amazing bookkeeper. Nothing was ever handed to her.
Next was Grandpa, my mom's dad. When he was eight years old, his mom died. He was left with his dad and sisters, and then put into a bad living situation. Most of Grandpa's stories involve orange groves, the military, or something about one of our family members that he used to run around town with and get into trouble. He grew up working in orange groves just so he could eat. Was anything handed to him?
Maybe some sweet soul out there felt bad for the kid who was hungry and gave him something, or let him take from their garden, but mostly my Grandpa worked, and worked hard, for what he has today. (Side note: he's owned his own business since the 1960s...I think. He's going to be seventy-seven this year and he still sprays lawns weekly. He's an amazing salesman and would completely be able to sell ocean-front property in Arizona).
I stopped after that, but my Grandma, Mamaw, and Papaw all came from basically nothing, too.
And then there's me, sitting in my Samford University dorm room that I now get all to myself, looking out of my second story window, listening to the rain hit the sidewalk, feeling the wind whip at my tears that were flowing down my cheeks.
I think, sometimes, people look at me and think I was handed a lot -- which is true, I have been handed a lot in my life thanks to parents and grandparents who were able to give me everything they always wanted.
I was handed the sport of gymnastics from the time I was two. I know most of the people who read these ramblings are gym parents, so they know exactly how expensive this sport was for my parents who were small-business owners just trying to give their daughter something fun. For those of you who are not gym parents, just know that looking back, I'm amazed that they were able to afford it for all those years (especially with competitions in Boca Raton, FL, Virginia Beach, VA, and many in Orlando, FL). Through this sport that they handed me, I was able to learn a lot of work ethic skills and how to fail (...a lot).
When my mind got to this point, still staring out the window but with a bit of a blurry, tear-soaked view, I began running all these "if this hadn't happened, this wouldn't have happened" scenarios through my head:
If I would not have always been flipping off of footstools as a young toddler, my parents probably wouldn't have put me in gymnastics.
If my parents wouldn't have put me in gymnastics, I would not have the experience to be a gymnastics coach.
If I did not have gymnastics coach experience, I would not have started working at a gym.
If I had not started working at a gym, I would not have realized I loved teaching so much.
If I had not started working at a gym, I would not have met a certain co-worker.
If I had not met a certain co-worker, the likelihood of taking a certain instructor's class at the community college I decided to enroll in on a whim would have been kind of slim.
Without that certain instructor, I would not have even known about Samford, the school that I'm literally looking out at from my dorm window.
The dorm window that Dad and Mom worked so hard to pay for, and that Mom is still working hard to pay for. I know that I'm lucky, and I know that I've had a lot handed to me in my life. Although I have still worked very hard in my life to get to this second-story dorm window, one little piece of literature in movie form reminded me of how blessed I am, and how God really just knew what He was doing when I was doing forward rolls off the living room couch.
Comments