Sitting on the front porch with my mom and sister, we are surrounded by a thousand acres of land. When the sun goes down later, distant lights will remind us of where we are. A few miles south is Florence, the town of 1,054 people where I grew up, and farther south is the city of Austin, where I live now. When I drive to the family ranch for a visit, we usually pass the majority of the weekend out here on the front porch, talking and drinking beer with each other.
“They just have it out for her and I find it absolutely pathetic,” my mom says, anger crisply delivering her words on Vanity Fair’s most recent Sarah Palin article.
For a second, I recall the 2008 presidential campaign, when it became all too tangible that my parents’ approval of Palin and conservative values was equally as strong as my disapproval and support for liberal beliefs. It was a time filled with strong arguments, temporary dislike, and confusion over how I could share blood with this man and woman, and how they could have borne a child like me.
But today, instead of blindly trying to prove my point, I feel a stronger desire to remain connected to my mom. So, I listen. After a few moments, Palin drifts off into the horizon.
My dad walks outside, wearing his daily uniform of Wrangler blue jeans, denim Wrangler shirt, boots, and a cap. The ice in his glass of whiskey clanks like a wind chime as he asks us if we want to go for a ride through the pastures. Soon we’re loading into the jeep, with Dad driving, Mom sitting next to him, and my sister, myself, and my boyfriend squeezed in the back seat. As the four-wheel drive pulls us through the cedar trees and rocks, the jeep’s tires roll over the first 18 years of my life. I breathe deep to take it all in. This land is a part of me, I remember for the first time in months. Living in Austin, where life is so different, it is easy to forget where I come from.
Chugging along the ridge on the ranch’s southern property line, we see some specs of people. My sister peers through the binoculars and tells us that it is Rob, my mom’s youngest brother and our uncle.
We drive down to him and hop out of the jeep. While several of his friends sit on the tailgate of his truck holding rifles and drinking beer, Rob walks up the hill with a dead bird in his hand. He rips the dove’s head off, plucks its feathers out, and plops the small blob of flesh in an ice chest–one of the first kills of another dove season–then looks up at us with his sun-darkened and aging face.
“Lindsay Anna, give your Uncle Rob a hug,” he says to the niece he sees the least.
Perpetually unsure whether to embrace Rob as family, I lean forward and almost stretch my arms out to him. But when I see the dove blood on his hands and shirt, I hesitate.
“Well, I would but you’ve got blood on you,” I say, pulling back and feeling stupid for wearing my nice work shirt.
“Don’t tell me you’re afraid of a little blood now?” he says.
As Rob leans forward, I back up, but he succeeds at giving me a one-sided hug, wiping a small amount of blood on my arm and shirt. I stumble on a spiny bush and my sister catches me before I fall to the dirt.
“Lindsay Anna, you vegetarian city slicker,” Rob says with disgust.
“Well, she did go to UT,” Mom chimes in, referring to the University of Texas, which has a debatable reputation among some as a liberal institution.
“That just goes to show, they don’t learn ya everything ya need to know in college,” my uncle says in response.
Based on what my family has said in the past, I assume Rob is implying that UT taught me to be liberal, and in doing this, robbed me of life’s most important and relevant knowledge: conservatism. Our deepest divider has reared its head.
My family and I discovered our conflicting political opinions during my first year in Austin. The Bush-Kerry campaign was underway and I was a freshman at UT taking a class on homosexuality (only in Austin, my parents would say). Four years later when the polls showed Obama would be the next president of the United States, I stepped outside my friends’ champagne celebration to call my mom and gloat. She had quit watching the poll results a few hours before and heard the news for the first time from me. She said she wasn’t surprised, but sounded genuinely sad. Then she told me she was scared. I quickly brushed this off as crazy conservative thought.
But something happened in between that night and now: I began to want to understand those whose veins hold the same blood as mine. I noticed this transition earlier that afternoon, when my mom talked about Palin and I didn’t argue. It would happen again a few days later, when watching President Obama’s Congressional address on health care. Instead of writing these people off as ignorant Republicans, I tried to wrap my mind around their case (with the exception of Joe Wilson). I even read some conservative political commentary.
Rob is wrong about UT brainwashing me to be liberal, but his words that night were somehow right—people don’t learn everything they need to know in college. It has taken me close to five years to realize and admit that my family’s conservative views are legitimate. I’m not sure what caused this to happen, but it wasn’t because of anything I learned under the ivory tower. Perhaps it’s that desire to remain connected.
While I still do not agree with them on many issues, especially health care, I see now that the road in between Austin and Florence really isn’t all that long. And when it comes down to it, what lies on each side doesn’t really matter. As long as we remember what lies in between.
