Please welcome today’s guest poster, Bekah Williamson. Bekah lives in Eastown for 21 more days before she moves to Budapest, Hungary to teach for a year. She graduated from Calvin in 2012 having studied English and psychology. She spent the past year as a food writer, pastry baker, and elementary school after-care coordinator. Perhaps her greatest triumph since graduation is learning 6 new ways to remove a cork from a wine bottle without a corkscrew.
“Dad, there’s a fishing boat ahead.”
“Yup. I see it.”
“Pops, she’s right and it’s going pretty slow.”
“I know.”
Silence.
“Then why aren’t you slowing down…”
“Dad! Stop. Their lines!”
“DAD!”
“Oh crud*.”
Silence.
“I didn’t see that they were trolling.”
“Yea.”
“Did our motor cut all of their lines?
“Yea.”
“Oh crud*.”
This may or may not be a conversation that occurred last week during my family vacation. Hard to say. If it did, it may have occurred while my brothers, father, and I were driving the boat back to the cottage after a particularly excellent post-dinner-the water-is-smooth-as-glass ski. Before the above noted conversation we were bantering about Sam’s epic double flip wipe-out (hilarious) and Jonathan’s uncanny ability to dominate everyone even after a year of not skiing (jerk). After the above noted conversation we were silent and, I’ll be honest, the mood was a bit awkward. It didn’t improve when we noticed the fishermen, who I am sure are wonderful people but were experiencing severe disappointment and expressing their disappointment with some specifically chosen hand gestures and insults. Unfortunately, the still glass-like water carried their words to our already embarrassed ears with perfect pitch.
As you may have guessed, I’ve been a Williamson my whole life. If there is one thing I’ve learned it’s that my family intentionally doesn’t follow rules. At times, I wonder if we even have a choice, or if we came into this world pre-wired for rebellion. Even weirder is our innate sense of rightness, that by our disregard of rules we are preserving the purity of freedom. I must clarify that my mother is not a rule-breaker and happens to respect rules and the structure they provide. This means that my brothers and I learned all that we know about breaking rules from my father.
In third grade I had my first disagreement with a teacher. Before that year I had been home schooled, and one doesn’t argue with a teacher when she is also the one making your dinner. I got off the bus from my first day of public school and was upset about something I had been told. My father sat me down and said, “Don’t believe everything an authority figure tells you as absolute truth. Use your brain and analyze the situation. Do not follow blindly.”
I nodded in understanding and immediately accepted everything he said as absolute truth.
His wisdom has helped me through many tight spots throughout the years; high school especially was a breeze. Unfortunately, I have discovered that several of my friends were not raised with this advice as their firm foundation, and I see the way such ignorance ties them down. They turn assignments in on time, never argue with their schedule at work, and rarely got in trouble with the dorm staff. I wonder at all they will look back on and regret in the years to come. Reality is a hard truth to face.
As we pulled in to the dock, still silent, I realized that my father was not insane. He was not losing his grip, nor had his reason gone awry. He had simply put into practice the very wisdom he had explained to me all those many years ago: he wasn’t blindly following. He chose to analyze the situation instead of swallowing whatever his kids had to say.
That would be a polite interpretation, perhaps not accurate but clever enough.
If I know one thing about the Williamsons, it is that we intentionally don’t follow rules. If I’ve learned two things about the Williamsons the second would be that we don’t like to admit our mistakes. If I’ve learned three things about the Williamsons the third would consist of our adept ability to shroud our mistakes under the guise of intentionally not following rules.
Clambering onto the dock, I wiped a solitary tear from my eye. I am a college graduate, and many things have changed since I walked off the bus that fateful day in third grade. We Williamsons have grown up, moved out, (some of us have) married, and (some of us have) had children of our own. At times we believe ourselves to have outgrown our need for Dad’s wisdom. Yet he is always ready to bring us back to the beginning, our foundation in understanding, no matter how many fishing lines he has to cut, intentionally or not, along the way.
——–
*He didn’t actually say crud.
Rebekah (’12) teaches English as a second language at Grand Rapids Community College. She does not drink coffee nor purchase Apple products.
I love this profile of your dad and your family! We have a streak of rule-breaking in our family, but it mostly missed me, and you’re right–I have some real regrets about that.