Seagull nation

My precious mother died young in 1983 at the age of 56, but before she left, she lived a life that was an embarassment of riches, literally. She grew up in the recently Old South — the New Orleans of the first half of the 20th Century — with footmen, chaffeurs, cooks, maids, summer homes, winter homes, private planes, the works. Her family money came first from cotton, then from steel, and her family’s business was finally and permanently laid to rest by her brother’s steadfast refusal to unionize in the 1970s and ’80s. She died with relatively little, yet her interest and dividends still covered her mortgage, and she never held a paying job.

Don’t hate her because she was privileged. She was my greatest teacher.

With privilege comes access — to people, places, and things — and my parents brought to my life the ability to meet so-called “important” people. That they were conservative academics who had spent a decade living and studying in Europe after The War meant that most of the people I met were right-wing political types. Barry Goldwater, George Wallace, Ronald Reagan, Valery Giscard d’Estaing were all “friends of the family.”

So I grew up with Buckley-esque political rhetoric ringing in my ears like so much muzak. But I struggled to understand how my mother — a funny, educated, socially liberal woman with so much raw ability to share of herself — could be outright self-centered when it came to helping those “less fortunate.” (She read Richard Wright, for Pete’s sake!)

Shortly before she died, we were having a political conversation over cocktails (that’s a completely redundant statement), and it went something like this:

ME: So, Mother, if you have two hamburgers and your neighbor doesn’t have anything to eat, would you give them one of your hamburgers?

MOTHER: Not unless I’d invited them to dinner, no.

ME: You know what I mean. You have two hamburgers. You can only eat one. What are you going to do with the second one?

MOTHER: Probably throw it away.

ME: So why not give it to someone who needs it?

MOTHER: Because that’s socialism.

ME: Sharing is socialism? Are you sure?

MOTHER: Yes! Of course!

ME: But that’s ridiculous. You don’t need or even want the hamburger! You won’t even miss it! I’m not asking you to give half of the burger you WANT to eat! How can you sit there and say you won’t give it to somebody who’s starving???

(And here’s the kicker… said with abject sincerity…)

MOTHER: Because it’s mine.

Because it’s mine.

And that is how I came to understand. As much as some people like to bemoan the entitlement complex that they believe the other half has, it is their own “Mine” complex that is retarding us. Hidden beneath “the bill isn’t perfect so we shouldn’t pass it” is a genuine fear that if people are asked to share, they’ll lose their edge. They’re not bad people, on the whole, just scared stupid. (I leave room here for the truly despicable on both ends of the spectrum who aren’t scared or stupid, just plain mean.)

I have an elderly woman in my life who, God love her, hates everybody. The Jews run the world financial complex, The Blacks are all on welfare, The Mexicans are all illegal and sapping our resources, The Arabs all want to blow us up, The Asians are gearing up for world domination through education, The Gays want to destroy the sacred institution of marriage, and The Damned Democrats are giving away HER country! Archie Bunker couldn’t have said it better. I get hateful, nasty, holier-than-thou emails from this person every single day. (I have her on spam filter, but they slip through sometimes so I know she’s still out there.) Yet as angry and disgusted as she makes me, I know for sure that she’s scared to death.

So here’s my wish for her: I hope that she never knows the kind of poverty that has bill collectors ringing her phone every hour for years on end. I hope she never loses her home and has to plead and cajole a landlord into giving her shelter. I hope she never knows the unpleasantness of being sick, but not being able to go to the doctor. I hope she never falls victim to a natural disaster that leaves her with nowhere to go, no money to pay for shelter, and no insurance assistance. I hope she never has to stand in line for food, except at the grocery store. I hope she never learns that friends have fuses, too, and can only take so much of her misery. I hope that she never discovers what it is to be alone in her own country. These are middle class American woes. If we were in Haiti, I would wish her a different list.

My hopes for her are not altruistic. I just don’t think she could take it.

Remember the scene in “Finding Nemo” where the seagulls all dive for the same scrap? Remember what they said? “Mine! Mine! Mine!”

And so we are a Seagull Nation. The bird who wins the scrap then flies up above everybody else and craps all over their heads.

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Copyright © 2010 Alice Melott