The Ninth Street Center Infrequently Asked Questions

Why shouldn't you live in the past?
by Garrison Keillor

[an excerpt from "Tales From Lake Wobeggon" as broadcast on National Public Radio, March 21, 1998]

. . . It was a gorgeous, gaudy time for my cousin Rose when she was a topless, stand-up comedian and when she was in the circus. And around that time she decided that she really preferred women to men, that men were just dangerous. And so she gave up on them. And she moved off to Larkspur with her lover, Alice.

Alice was tremendously handy with power tools. They bought this little run down dump up on the hill in Larkspur and they turned it into a showplace in about two years. Rose and Alice lived up there. They had a deck and they had a Jaccusi. They used to sit in their Jaccusi with their two cats, Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toeclaws, and eat take out pizza and sit up in the sun in Larkspur. We heard very little about her for years.Years went by. And we didn't even think too much about her.

I met Alice. I met her when Rose came out to visit. It was one summer. I don't know why she did. She was happy in Larkspur, there in this house with cats and a Jaccusi and posters of Martina up on all the walls and little rows of hiking boots there under their bed. She decided she needed to come back to Lake Wobegon and she called me and asked if I could pick them up at the airport. and I said of course I could and I was going to be driving home to Lake Wobegon anyway so I would give them a ride. I met them at the airport.

Here she was, she had just celebrated her 50^th birthday, and when she got off the plane I never saw anybody who looked so shattered. She looked as if she was facing up to the most horrendous experience in her life. She was so afraid of coming back home. She'd had four drinks on the plane and she was a mess.

We got her off and we got her into the car and I headed north. And she wanted to stop and have another drink — this tall, tan, lovely woman who I'm sure was perfectly happy until she got on that plane and had to come back to Lake Wobegon.

She and Alice got in an argument in the car. There was nothing interesting about it. It was the same as any argument between any two people one of whom is making a fool of herself. And Rose said the most amazing thing in the car. She said, "I'm 50 years old and I've got nothing to show for it."

She said, "50 years old and I'm still trying to get over what they did to me. Boy, they make their mark on you. Things that they do, by the time you're 10 years old you can go in therapy for years. I just joined this group, 'Wounded Daughters of Distant Fathers,' and boy I realize that I could spend the next 30 years of my life just trying to get to the bottom of what they did to me."

It was so sad. She came back to Lake Wobegon. She stayed with her parents, who were happy to see her. She went up and wept in her bed, up in the bedroom. And Alice went to work with power tools. She got wood out, she was making cabinets left and right, having a wonderful time. They went for hikes. There were cats around. She had no problem. It was just my cousin.

There are people who only feel themselves at full strength when they are in opposition to others, and that's what propels them. But when you rebel against your parents and make that your life, you never get over it, you see? You make your parents into these immense powerful stone figures.

The child who stays at home, for that child the parents simply, gently dwindle and diminish over the years and become more human and weaker and more worthy of sympathy and love. But to the child who runs away they become immense — they become a theme park, these parents. They're not that big, they're not that powerful, and they do change, and the things that you fought with them over do vanish with time.

When you base your life on rebellion and opposition, it's a noble thing in a way, at least at first. But you so often find yourself in opposition to things that simply are true. There are things that were taught my cousin in Lake Wobegon that simply are true. And some of them are that you should be thankful, you should be cheerful, you should mind your manners, you should make yourself useful, and you should avoid self-pity at all costs — which I'm sure she did once she got back to Larkspur and she and Alice got back into the Jaccusi with the cats and they started making cabinets again and the sun shone down on them and they had a little pizza and gradually Lake Wobegon faded into the distance, as it should do.

Take small views of life, think a couple of days ahead, and don't bother to solve the past because it will solve itself. It will gradually fade and all of these figures will get smaller and smaller and smaller.