Book type: Memoir
Summary: At the beginning of Bootstrapper: From Broke to Badass on a Northern Michigan Farm, Mardi Jo Link has fallen out with her husband after almost twenty years of marriage. She finds herself running the family’s farm (Big Valley, as she’s named it) while her soon-to-be ex-husband lives just a few hundred yards away. Over the next year, she and her three adolescent sons are forced to make ends meet in creative ways; they scavenge for firewood on the side of the road, enter and win zucchini contests, raise chickens to slaughter, lose some of their land, and gain survival skills–both emotional and physical–and they learn how to live their new lives together.
Lessons:
- Sometimes you need a bonfire. One of the first scenes in the book is Mardi Jo out in her yard setting fire to her memories. Her husband has moved out and taken some things with him and while her kids are away for the weekend, she decides to do some cleanup of her own. She finds her wedding photos, takes them outside, and sets them ablaze. Then she takes her wedding dress, drives to Goodwill, and practically shoves the dress into the arms of an inmate who is working there. Getting rid of her wedding artifacts didn’t get rid of her marriage struggles, but it did provide some relief. “Take my word for it,” she says, “burning your wedding pictures in a bonfire in your front yard, then handing over your wedding dress to a snaggle-toothed felon, can take your mind of your man troubles. Oh, it surely can” (14).
- Face the truth and tackle it head-on. Several times during the difficult year of 2005-2006, Mardi Jo’s family encounters major setbacks that she’s not equipped to handle: natural gas is too expensive to run heat and hot water, their decades-old sump pump finally fails, she loses her minivan in the divorce settlement, and food they’ve stored in their deep freezer spoils after a power outage. (And more.) But even though she wasn’t always able to right the ship immediately, even though she lacked the resources to make the problems go away, she acknowledged that the problems existed and negotiated ways of resolving them over time.”Knowing how bad things are is better than not knowing…[E]ven when that reality turns out to be a little worse than you’d imagined” (19). Be careful about ignoring setbacks or about putting band-aids on big issues; they can come back to haunt you. And above all, avoid credit card debt and payday loans as much as possible. (And if you haven’t seen it already and have 15 minutes to spare, watch John Oliver explain the dangers of predatory lending.)
- Your problems are not everyone else’s, so keep them in check. At one point, Mardi Jo takes her sons to a local fair, spending their last few available dollars so that her kids can have a good time. After one of her sons wins a shooting game, he says he can’t wait to tell his dad about his win. She’s upset for the obvious reason that she was the one who brought him to the fair, but also because she was the one who taught him to shoot, who spent time setting up targets in their back yard for him to practice on. But before she makes the situation about her, she has a realization: “‘Why don’t you call him and tell him about it when we get home?’ I force myself to say. I am the one divorcing their father, they’re not. This seems like an easy concept to grasp until it is you that has to do the grasping” (25).
- When times get tough, do a two-step. While dancing may help too, this is really about a two-step solution that Mardi Jo discovers in a Zen book from a library’s used-book sale. The two steps are: 1. Be aware of your surroundings, and 2. Inventory your immediate blessings. “This advice from A Deeper Beauty sounds easy and harmless enough…” but like the previous lesson, things often seem easier than they turn out to be (60).
- Be patient and receptive to the world around you. Mardi Jo introduces each chapter with a poem or other brief excerpt that serves to frame the events that follow. This one was my favorite and is, I believe, a good reminder that not everything happens in the time frame we want it to. We must be patient and open to experiencing our world and what it has to offer.
May we all be fortunate enough to have a path shown us by the universe, and may we all have the courage to follow it. Enlightenment need not arrive all at once straddling a bolt of lightning…It might come in small packages as moonlight reflected in the frost of a cold November morning. -Danny Swicegood, How We Are Called
A final review/recommendation:
Bootstrapper is a quick read and shows some of the difficulties that families experience when going through divorce. Mardi Jo is forthcoming and blunt about her feelings, yet also reflective and deeply concerned about the life she’s molding for her sons. Her story is an American story, one of a rural family trying to put the pieces of their emotional lives back together while also trying to keep their physical lives going. If you are looking for a good weekend (or bathroom) read or just want some insight into a life most of us do not live (on a farm growing our own food, etc.), Bootstrapper provides both heart-wrenching and hilarious scenes that will entertain you until you finish it.
Photo & Video Credits
Book Cover: http://img2.imagesbn.com/p/9780307743589_p0_v1_s260x420.JPG
John Oliver (HBO): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDylgzybWAw
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