Educated

David stayed in Wexford through last night, so I didn’t have a car for four days. That’s part of why I’ve been less willing to go to evening dances. Logistics are a bit harder. Cabs are an option but they are expensive. I took a cab to the golf club and back to play on Thursday--19 pounds round trip when each leg was less than 15 minutes. I had a golf lesson on Friday so I rode my bike, which is tricky when carrying the three clubs I decided to practice with.
Saturday I just stayed home. Which allowed me to finish the second book I’ve read in as many weeks. Educated is about a girl growing up in a Mormon family in Idaho that spends much of its time preparing for the End Times. She was home schooled, which meant working every day in a scrap yard separating metals among heavy machinery to move, shear, and crush wrecked cars and I-beams.
Her father was bipolar, which fed his paranoia (fear of the government) and messianic tendencies (direct conversations with Joseph Smith, for instance). His wife and seven children were his audience, his kingdom, his feudal estate. He constantly put his children in danger, a danger magnified by his distrust of doctors and hospitals. His wife was successful in homeopathy, selling herbal potions and midwifery services. Yet she still cooked for a big family three times a day. One of the author's brothers was brutally abusive toward her, for instance calling her a whore and shoving her head in a toilet. Repeatedly.
She escapes into a world of education, unlike her sister who escaped into an unhappy marriage. The book was a tough read. I had to put it down at times because I had such dread of pending catastrophe. The greatest miracle of the book is that its author survived to tell her tale.
The strangest thing about the book was the loyalty she felt toward her parents. I would think she would light out of there on a rocket and not look back, once the university (used generically) revealed to her the lies she had been fed since birth (about slavery, Jews, women, science). But she constantly fought a battle between living her life as an educated woman--and forfeiting all family ties--and returning to the Idaho mountain she loved and into the fold of her family, forsaking all knowledge of the outside world and of herself. That would not be a battle for me. She nearly died multiple times due to the abuse or disregard of her brother and father. Her mother wilfully ignored the constant danger she faced. Maybe the loyalty arises from the fear of the unknown, of being dislocated in the big bad world. But it is a better option than living a lie--including the lie that her only destiny was to marry and have many children.
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