The Copper End of the Gold Coast

I cannot escape my father’s legacy, not that I’m trying or anything.

He stopped by to drop off an insurance form the other day, and took me to dinner at a bar down the street. We had MGDs and hamburgers, it was nice to see him and to catch up. I don’t see my family much; they live too many dollars in gas down Route 2.

We were driving back, and I was asking him how I liked my neighborhood, and he said of course it’s fine, it used to be his neighborhood too. Apparently, when my dad was a young bachelor (and before he lived Cleveland Heights, about a block from where I lived last), he lived in Lakewood, about a block from where I live now. Along the shore, there is a stretch of apartments known as the “gold coast,” and he lived in what he wittily dubbed “the copper end of the gold coast,” the oldest and most run down of the high-rises. He hung a painting on his wall that now hangs on mine, painted by his brother, canvas stretched over bent wood, two reposing nude women in sun hats.

Prompted by such an obvious context, I’ve realized that I like the heritage I’ve been handed down. My dad comes from a family of Swedes and a Scottish Highlander (he insists that, as a result, members of our family can’t die and can travel through time), my mom’s family hails from the Low Countries. They’ve lived long in the Midwest, and all this has resulted in…me. I live on the copper end of the gold coast in the steel belt; it’s my anthropological inheritance.

I listen to the radio instead of my iPod. I watch the West Wing and think everyone should be like President Bartlett. I love wit and well-used sarcasm. I get pleasure from cleaning the house efficiently, down to the last gritty detail. Sometimes I call my mom just to chat about the best way to remove a stain. I bargain shop, I check out garage sales, I think everything is fixable with enough glue and the right light.

I used to think all these things were my own invention, that I’d invented a personality for myself. I was a teenager so loaded with hubris that I could barely stand up straight. Turns out, the way I am is just the way I’ve dealt with what my family taught me. I rejected some lessons, but others have become so internalized that I don’t even realize they’re there, unless I think about it.

It’s good to know.