Advice from a Broken-down, Bedraggled Old Sheep Herder

Posted by | June 12, 2010 | Comments Off

In my senior year of high school, Ann Darr’s poem “Advice I Wish Someone Had Given Me,” was a favorite:

Be strange if it is necessary, be
quiet, kindly as you can without
feeling the heel marks on your head.
Be expert in some way that pleasures
you, story-telling, baking, bed;
marvel at the marvelous
in leaves, stones, intercepted light:
put truth and people in their right-
full angle in the sun . . . find the shadow,
what it falls upon.
Trust everyone a little, no one much.
Care carfully.
Thicken your skin to hints and hurts, be
allergic to the soul scrapers.

When I graduated from high school, I decided I would ask for my own set of advice. I sent my grandparents a gift-request via mail: In lieu of graduation presents, I wrote, please write me a letter, giving me your best advice as I leave my parents’ home and embark on my own. As was typical of my 17-year-old romantic self, I waited with eager anticipation for what I was sure would be profound, wise, poetic, and deeply moving letters from my grandparents.

When the actual letters came, they could not, of course, live up to my inflated expectations. They were nice to read, but seemed cliché to me in their repetition of church phrases and religious admonitions, not to mention the random Reader’s Digest articles that one of my grandmothers had stuffed in with her letter.

The last letter I received was the one I had most anticipated. It was from Grandpa Skin “a broken-down, bedraggled old sheepherder,” to use his oft-repeated self-description. Soft-spoken, quick-witted Grandpa Skin, with his cowboy hat, colorful sayings, and toothpick tricks had long been one of my favorite people. I had never seen him write, and he was close-mouthed about much of his past, but I was sure this would not hold, given my eloquent plea for advice. When I opened Grandpa Skin’s letter, though, I thought surely he had misunderstood my request. His 7-page letter described in thorough detail his—and my—ancestors, beginning with my great-great-great grandfather. I read the letter, but dismissed it as very rambling and not very relevant.

This morning, I found Grandpa Skin’s letter as I was sorting papers in my office. Almost twenty years later, I think understand better what advice he was trying to give me. Grandpa wrote about my relatives who impressed him with their honesty, their ambition, their keen wit, their common sense their kindness, and, above all, their love for their family. Now I understand the meaning behind his description of my great-grandmother’s struggle with blindness the last 15 years of her life: “I think that I shall always remember her positive attitude,” he wrote. And again in his story of my great-grandfather whose ranch failed and whose wife and twin daughters died: “I particularly remember my grandfather and his ability to adjust to the many challenges in his life. I never heard him complain.” Now I read purpose in his underlined phrases, for example, as he described my sharp-tongued, no-nonsense grandmother who “earned the love and respect of all who understood her.”

Looking back now, I don’t know that I needed to ask my grandparents to spell out their advice to me. If I had just paid attention, I could see the advice they gave to me permeating their lives, woven throughout their daily activities, their conversation topics, their choices of what to do with their time and their money, and so on. I think Grandpa was telling me that. What at the time seemed to be garbled was actually a treatise about looking to my family and to those who love me for role models and examples and ultimately for advice on what is truly important in life.

Do you have advice you wish someone had given you? Advice you were glad you got or gave?

Related posts:

  1. One reason why I do this
  2. Legacy
  3. An Epistle to my Good Senses

Category: Daily Special

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