You Can’t Take It With You-Writing Assignment
FYS-the Family Drama
Evan Mowry
Part One:
Christmas has always been a very clock-work phenomenon for my family. Every year we switch off between my dad’s side of the family and my mom’s; going to New York or Colorado; whichever was scheduled for the only holiday we really celebrated outside the immediate family. In 8th grade, however, we broke the chain. My aunt and cousin were moving from Colorado to Hawaii that year, and hadn’t the time for us to visit. So, we changed plans and bought plane tickets to Ithaca.
This was the first time I remember ever not going to Mary and Jessica’s when we were supposed to. It felt kind of odd; visiting the wrong people.
All the Christmases at my grandparents are roughly the same in the manner I remember them. Their house is always very warm, and the outside is always blanketed in snow. New York is beautiful in the winter. There are calendars with pictures of red birds perched on branches with frozen red berries; well, that is what New York is like. It is the picturesque east-coast winter at its finest.
We always take the same route to my grandparents’ house from the airport, past their old house. For as long as I can remember they had lived in that house, and there were brilliant antiques on the walls and in glass cabinets, an ancient piano that was always perfectly in tune, and a cozy downstairs where no one went; a place I could escape to. I remember watching Star Trek: the Next Generation every night in that downstairs every year I was there.
My grandparents had moved out of that house and into a semi-assisted living cottage because of their health. They were getting too old to walk up and down the stairs every day to get to the cars, and the kitchen was miniscule; they could no longer safely cook. Every time we went to their new home, at least the first time each trip, we would drive by their old house and I’d stare at it through the window. I was always glad that the new owners didn’t decorate it gaudily; just some modest white lights around the shrubs in front, and a pine wreath on the door.
So, for a second or two, amidst all the semi-small talk that normally happens when you get into a car with people you haven’t seen in ages, I would be quiet and watch the house, and then turn to the right quickly to catch the Evans’ house on the other side of the road.
The cottage is always softly lit; the walls are cream colored and all the antique lampshades and under-powered lamps make the walls glow slightly warm, milky light. All the brass figurines and decorative plates and other nick-nacks from all over the world that have accumulated in this house, and have seemed gaudy before, really glow. My Christmases are always either brass or white; brass at my grandparents and a cold, healthy white at home.
My aunt was there, and gave us hugs when we came in. She always acts kind of expectantly; a little unsure of herself, even though she is a very confident person. Nancy is really the only one of my relatives that I identify with; she enjoys living “hippie-rich”; her house is full of clay and wood and woven rugs, and is creaky. She wears comfortable clothes that are kind of dressy, and she’s happy with her work and hobbies. Not very many people are both, as I’ve found, but that’s one thing I really need for myself; whatever I do, I have to enjoy it for it to be long term. If it’s not, it won’t get done.
Her hugs smell like sandalwood and lavender, and she always has a little “how about these silly old folks?” smile for me.
Usually we just settle down and watch the news the first night. My grandparents only watch the news on TV. Even though they were one of the first people in the city of Ithaca to buy a color TV, and the first to buy a TV at all, they hardly ever watch it. I sat in the kitchen and watched that television, because I didn’t really find the news interesting when I was in eighth grade. The plastic chairs they have you have to sit down completely in, as their very flexible: I’ve smacked my chin on the counter more than a few times because I’ve kneeled on them and the legs have buckled.
Their kitchen is always empty, and my sister and I always find a very depressing, nearly empty, flat bottle of root beer in the fridge. In four Christmases out of five that I can remember, we’ve dumped away a lot of flat root beer. Four because four times it was root beer, and once it was ginger ale.
After dinner, before we go to bed, the kids (my sister and I, basically), get to open one present. Nothing portentous has ever been unwrapped by my hand, but there used to be something magical about starting early.
The rest of the night goes by in a blur. I never’ve paid much attention to what my parents do Christmas night. Usually they’re in their room, unpacking and wrapping presents. I lay awake reading back issues of National Geographic from the sixties and seventies, articles that I’ve read many times before. Finally, once the tiny space heater warms up the frigid three-season porch, I drift off to sleep.
My eight grade Christmas was different from all the others because of Rock music, and for this same reason it was the most important.
I had saved up enough, just around Thanksgiving, to buy a cd player, and I was starting to buy my own cds instead of listening to the top 40 countdown wherever I went. I got a few cds for Christmas: the Matrix Soundtrack and some others, and I spent the next day listening to them. My grandpa even became angry, telling me I could listen to my own music on my headphones, but if I was going to use their stereo I had to listen to older stuff. He tried to push Gilbert and Sullivan on me! The Pirates of Penzance? As if.
My eighth grade Christmas was important in this respect because I became a self-aware person. No longer was I a unit of my family, I was a revolutionary! I don’t really know if it was because of the actual music or just me, beginning to branch out on my own, but whatever it was, it really hit hard. I felt hostile to my grandparents and parents and didn’t feel guilty about feeling that way. It was liberating.
These gifts we give on Christmas, because of the setting we give them in, have tremendous potential, and indeed so do gifts given at any time. In giving me something that separated me from my family so dramatically in my own eyes, my parents began, in a way, my adulthood.
Part Two:
My family sits down at least three or four times a week and watches hour-long, primetime dramas. That is our hobby, and that is the thing that we do, together. I didn’t really understand it until recently; I was always just irritated that I had to sit through Judging Amy before I could watch stupid sitcoms on FOX, but now I realize that that was what bound us together during the week.
On the weekends we did chores; on Sunday, homework and we went to church. All of these activities were relatively solitary in nature. But during the week, regardless of how busy we were with school or work or anything, we would always watch the West Wing, ER, Judging Amy, Ed, etc. It was when we came together, and frequently replaced our family dinner as “family time” during the day.
I think that when I started playing on the computer instead of watching the TV I kind of ruined that dynamic. I was no longer privy to the plot of the show which, in a sense, stood for the “plot” of my family. My sister, however, either enjoyed the shows or the sense of family she got when watching them, and she continued watching. While I was fighting for my rights (as I saw it) since before high school, my sister has only just begun to (in her sophomore year). True, I am a more volatile person and am much more likely to speak out when I think I should be able to do something, but I think that the shows have something to do with it; because she stayed with the family for longer, she developed a more sophisticated dialogue with them that allowed her to not have to fight to get her way.
You Can’t Take It With You, as the title implies, is a play emphasizing a contentedness in life over success. This coming at the time of the Great Depression was a very important message for the American public, and it still resonates with Americans today.
America has long since projected an image of economic success. Immigrants come to this country to make a better life for their children or themselves because they see it as a land of opportunity. During the Great Depression, however, there was little opportunity or economic success. YCTIWY’s message was important to people because it gave them hope for happiness by redirecting their focus from money to connections or, put more simply, love. When Grandpa explains to Mr. Kirby that he’s a much happier man for having quit, and Kirby allows himself to merely stay in the house, you breath a sigh of relief. It’s like you can see him getting saved, right there.
The message is still just as relevant as it was in the thirties. While society may have changed, people haven’t, and the same things are still the most important; family, love, and beauty consistently supersede money as the focal points of our lives. The only reason I remember some of my gifts from that Christmas I wrote of above is because they were catalysts that changed my family dynamic. If they hadn’t, they wouldn’t have stuck in my mind.
Part Three:
http://search.eb.com/eb/article?tocId=9064488&query=russian%20revolution&ct
http://search.eb.com/eb/article?tocId=9073511&query=leon%20trotsky&ct=
In 1917, two political revolutions rocked the Russian nation. The first, in February, came as a result of general starvation and dissatisfaction stemming from Russia’s involvement with World War I. Protests, led by the Bolshevik (communist) party, forced the abdication of Nicholas II when they became violent. The second, in October, was the result of Vladimir Lenin and his political consorts and their leftist, communist views. The provisional government was overthrown and the Soviet Union was formed.
Leon Trotsky was one of the foremost theorists of Marxism during the Russian Revolution and after. He held great power in the Soviet Union, until the death of Vladimir Lenin, after which he was removed from office and exiled, later to be killed, by Joseph Stalin.
During the Revolution, Trotsky was a premier Bolshevik party member, and served on the Bolshevik Central Committee. He personally led military resistance to the Kerensky-led government attempt at retaking Petrograd. Afterward, he was opposed to a coalition government that included the more liberal revolutionaries.
When he fell from power and was exiled, he moved from country to country, eventually settling in Mexico at the invitation of Diego Rivera. He was killed by a Stalinist agent in 1940; an ice pick driven into his skull by a Stalinist agent.
FYS-the Family Drama
Evan Mowry
Part One:
Christmas has always been a very clock-work phenomenon for my family. Every year we switch off between my dad’s side of the family and my mom’s; going to New York or Colorado; whichever was scheduled for the only holiday we really celebrated outside the immediate family. In 8th grade, however, we broke the chain. My aunt and cousin were moving from Colorado to Hawaii that year, and hadn’t the time for us to visit. So, we changed plans and bought plane tickets to Ithaca.
This was the first time I remember ever not going to Mary and Jessica’s when we were supposed to. It felt kind of odd; visiting the wrong people.
All the Christmases at my grandparents are roughly the same in the manner I remember them. Their house is always very warm, and the outside is always blanketed in snow. New York is beautiful in the winter. There are calendars with pictures of red birds perched on branches with frozen red berries; well, that is what New York is like. It is the picturesque east-coast winter at its finest.
We always take the same route to my grandparents’ house from the airport, past their old house. For as long as I can remember they had lived in that house, and there were brilliant antiques on the walls and in glass cabinets, an ancient piano that was always perfectly in tune, and a cozy downstairs where no one went; a place I could escape to. I remember watching Star Trek: the Next Generation every night in that downstairs every year I was there.
My grandparents had moved out of that house and into a semi-assisted living cottage because of their health. They were getting too old to walk up and down the stairs every day to get to the cars, and the kitchen was miniscule; they could no longer safely cook. Every time we went to their new home, at least the first time each trip, we would drive by their old house and I’d stare at it through the window. I was always glad that the new owners didn’t decorate it gaudily; just some modest white lights around the shrubs in front, and a pine wreath on the door.
So, for a second or two, amidst all the semi-small talk that normally happens when you get into a car with people you haven’t seen in ages, I would be quiet and watch the house, and then turn to the right quickly to catch the Evans’ house on the other side of the road.
The cottage is always softly lit; the walls are cream colored and all the antique lampshades and under-powered lamps make the walls glow slightly warm, milky light. All the brass figurines and decorative plates and other nick-nacks from all over the world that have accumulated in this house, and have seemed gaudy before, really glow. My Christmases are always either brass or white; brass at my grandparents and a cold, healthy white at home.
My aunt was there, and gave us hugs when we came in. She always acts kind of expectantly; a little unsure of herself, even though she is a very confident person. Nancy is really the only one of my relatives that I identify with; she enjoys living “hippie-rich”; her house is full of clay and wood and woven rugs, and is creaky. She wears comfortable clothes that are kind of dressy, and she’s happy with her work and hobbies. Not very many people are both, as I’ve found, but that’s one thing I really need for myself; whatever I do, I have to enjoy it for it to be long term. If it’s not, it won’t get done.
Her hugs smell like sandalwood and lavender, and she always has a little “how about these silly old folks?” smile for me.
Usually we just settle down and watch the news the first night. My grandparents only watch the news on TV. Even though they were one of the first people in the city of Ithaca to buy a color TV, and the first to buy a TV at all, they hardly ever watch it. I sat in the kitchen and watched that television, because I didn’t really find the news interesting when I was in eighth grade. The plastic chairs they have you have to sit down completely in, as their very flexible: I’ve smacked my chin on the counter more than a few times because I’ve kneeled on them and the legs have buckled.
Their kitchen is always empty, and my sister and I always find a very depressing, nearly empty, flat bottle of root beer in the fridge. In four Christmases out of five that I can remember, we’ve dumped away a lot of flat root beer. Four because four times it was root beer, and once it was ginger ale.
After dinner, before we go to bed, the kids (my sister and I, basically), get to open one present. Nothing portentous has ever been unwrapped by my hand, but there used to be something magical about starting early.
The rest of the night goes by in a blur. I never’ve paid much attention to what my parents do Christmas night. Usually they’re in their room, unpacking and wrapping presents. I lay awake reading back issues of National Geographic from the sixties and seventies, articles that I’ve read many times before. Finally, once the tiny space heater warms up the frigid three-season porch, I drift off to sleep.
My eight grade Christmas was different from all the others because of Rock music, and for this same reason it was the most important.
I had saved up enough, just around Thanksgiving, to buy a cd player, and I was starting to buy my own cds instead of listening to the top 40 countdown wherever I went. I got a few cds for Christmas: the Matrix Soundtrack and some others, and I spent the next day listening to them. My grandpa even became angry, telling me I could listen to my own music on my headphones, but if I was going to use their stereo I had to listen to older stuff. He tried to push Gilbert and Sullivan on me! The Pirates of Penzance? As if.
My eighth grade Christmas was important in this respect because I became a self-aware person. No longer was I a unit of my family, I was a revolutionary! I don’t really know if it was because of the actual music or just me, beginning to branch out on my own, but whatever it was, it really hit hard. I felt hostile to my grandparents and parents and didn’t feel guilty about feeling that way. It was liberating.
These gifts we give on Christmas, because of the setting we give them in, have tremendous potential, and indeed so do gifts given at any time. In giving me something that separated me from my family so dramatically in my own eyes, my parents began, in a way, my adulthood.
Part Two:
My family sits down at least three or four times a week and watches hour-long, primetime dramas. That is our hobby, and that is the thing that we do, together. I didn’t really understand it until recently; I was always just irritated that I had to sit through Judging Amy before I could watch stupid sitcoms on FOX, but now I realize that that was what bound us together during the week.
On the weekends we did chores; on Sunday, homework and we went to church. All of these activities were relatively solitary in nature. But during the week, regardless of how busy we were with school or work or anything, we would always watch the West Wing, ER, Judging Amy, Ed, etc. It was when we came together, and frequently replaced our family dinner as “family time” during the day.
I think that when I started playing on the computer instead of watching the TV I kind of ruined that dynamic. I was no longer privy to the plot of the show which, in a sense, stood for the “plot” of my family. My sister, however, either enjoyed the shows or the sense of family she got when watching them, and she continued watching. While I was fighting for my rights (as I saw it) since before high school, my sister has only just begun to (in her sophomore year). True, I am a more volatile person and am much more likely to speak out when I think I should be able to do something, but I think that the shows have something to do with it; because she stayed with the family for longer, she developed a more sophisticated dialogue with them that allowed her to not have to fight to get her way.
You Can’t Take It With You, as the title implies, is a play emphasizing a contentedness in life over success. This coming at the time of the Great Depression was a very important message for the American public, and it still resonates with Americans today.
America has long since projected an image of economic success. Immigrants come to this country to make a better life for their children or themselves because they see it as a land of opportunity. During the Great Depression, however, there was little opportunity or economic success. YCTIWY’s message was important to people because it gave them hope for happiness by redirecting their focus from money to connections or, put more simply, love. When Grandpa explains to Mr. Kirby that he’s a much happier man for having quit, and Kirby allows himself to merely stay in the house, you breath a sigh of relief. It’s like you can see him getting saved, right there.
The message is still just as relevant as it was in the thirties. While society may have changed, people haven’t, and the same things are still the most important; family, love, and beauty consistently supersede money as the focal points of our lives. The only reason I remember some of my gifts from that Christmas I wrote of above is because they were catalysts that changed my family dynamic. If they hadn’t, they wouldn’t have stuck in my mind.
Part Three:
http://search.eb.com/eb/article?tocId=9064488&query=russian%20revolution&ct
http://search.eb.com/eb/article?tocId=9073511&query=leon%20trotsky&ct=
In 1917, two political revolutions rocked the Russian nation. The first, in February, came as a result of general starvation and dissatisfaction stemming from Russia’s involvement with World War I. Protests, led by the Bolshevik (communist) party, forced the abdication of Nicholas II when they became violent. The second, in October, was the result of Vladimir Lenin and his political consorts and their leftist, communist views. The provisional government was overthrown and the Soviet Union was formed.
Leon Trotsky was one of the foremost theorists of Marxism during the Russian Revolution and after. He held great power in the Soviet Union, until the death of Vladimir Lenin, after which he was removed from office and exiled, later to be killed, by Joseph Stalin.
During the Revolution, Trotsky was a premier Bolshevik party member, and served on the Bolshevik Central Committee. He personally led military resistance to the Kerensky-led government attempt at retaking Petrograd. Afterward, he was opposed to a coalition government that included the more liberal revolutionaries.
When he fell from power and was exiled, he moved from country to country, eventually settling in Mexico at the invitation of Diego Rivera. He was killed by a Stalinist agent in 1940; an ice pick driven into his skull by a Stalinist agent.
posted by evan at 7:27 PM
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