Blame It All on My Roots

Reflections on class, DIY projects, and music

Audio postscript, since I revised after recording:

Spring Break used to mean SXSW. Now it means regrouting my shower. We are not DIY people in the least, but the price estimates of $2,000+ convinced us we are now. I spent about 15 hours in that shower over the last week, and as I did, two thoughts kept pulling at me.

One: No matter how far you’ve traveled in life, if you were a girl in the 90s, the words to Shoop are probably embedded deep in your psyche somewhere. Whole verses came unbidden out of my mouth. This playlist got me through hours 1-12. For the record, I needed a 90s country playlist to power through the last 3 hours. Brandy and Monica could only take me so far before I needed to call in the big guns.

Two: What determines societal class in our country? We claim to be a classless society. We know multimillionaires in the richest part of Austin who claim to be “middle class”, which is the exact same moniker I gave myself growing up, even when we were at the laundromat or handwashing our dishes. I wandered down this thought pathway because I was thinking about how my family belongs to a particular class (that most of my readers are in): you could technically pay someone to do your shower grout, but you’d rather save money with a DIY. That means we have the time to learn how, the physical ability to do it, and probably a certain smugness around not paying to outsource it. The term “honest work” kept coming into my head as I was endlessly wiping and scrubbing.

What I really mean by “honest work” is “tangible work”. The work I do now, as our family CEO, is by far the most important thing I’ll ever do with my life. Unfortunately, I won’t really know how it turns out for another 20 years, give or take. Sure, I’ve got a lot of data points for now. But if my kids end up in prison or addicted to meth, it will be hard not to blame myself¹. Of course, they will grow up to be their own people regardless, which calls into question just *how* much parenting really matters, which sends me down all the rabbit holes. To summarize, regrouting the shower showed visible results in about 20 hours, and for that, I loved it.

Before: Don’t judge the mold. The lesson here for fellow homeowners: always ask if your contractor is using caulk or grout, or you too may be unpleasantly surprised.

After: Gordon Grouting at your service; for rates inquire within.

So, what class am I in? The answer is always “middle”, right? It’s an amorphous mixture of wealth, mannerisms, and geography. I’m particularly interested in discussing class because it’s like weird body odors during pregnancy, pelvic floor recovery, or spanking your kids - it’s not polite to talk about it, we all pretend it doesn’t exist, and we go to great lengths to avoid being truthful about it. As I was ruining my workout shorts with grout smears, I mused. Do members of the upper class always pay to outsource this work? No, because I know wealthy people who are frugal and who prefer to do these repairs on their own. Do members of the working class or poverty class always DIY? No, because sometimes your worries are far more pressing than the cosmetic appearance of your shower. Class isn’t neat and tidy. So let’s dive in to this vague soup of wealth, mannerisms, and geography.

Wealth: This is where I go all trite on you, so just imagine this paragraph etched onto some rustic wooden board with a lace border. However much money you have, you’ll never believe it’s enough. When I was making $30,000 in 2007, I spent income on books and then ate cereal the last week of the month. I had enough to indulge in my reading habit and make rent, and I wasn’t truly worried about money. When I was making six figures most recently, I was no longer worried about rent or a few books. My worries leveled up to retirement and college savings accounts. If I were making even more, I’d probably start worrying that my great grandchildren wouldn’t have enough in the trust fund. Wealth, to me, is having your physical health, a loving and stable immediate family, green spaces to enjoy, and some time and income to play.

As it relates to class, wealth matters. I mentioned we went to the laundromat as a kid. There are levels to this, right? If we did a class breakdown, it would be something like:

• owns only clothes on the back

• owns few clothes

• owns enough clothes to go to laundromat

• owns enough wealth to have washer/dryer

• owns enough wealth to add in dry cleaning

• owns enough wealth to have laundry service

• owns enough wealth to have staff who handle laundry service

People in the middle categories are more likely to be regrouting their own showers, but it’s not unheard of for people on the lower and higher ends to do it too.

Mannerisms: In my family, we used disposable plates for holidays so that no one had to do the dishes. My husband’s family has Christmas china, yes, just for that holiday, and yes, there are table decorations too. That’s the difference between growing up at the end of a gravel road and growing up in Dallas. When James’s family threw us an engagement party, my people were calling me. “Do we bring gifts? What do we wear?” My answer? Play it cool, I don’t know, we’re marrying up so just act chill about it. Lest you think my in-laws are stuffy, I need to clarify here that they are an emotionally healthy family who shows up big for big milestones. They didn’t care what anyone wore to the party, and they’ve always shown profuse gratitude that I married James.

My insecurity around class came long before marriage though. In high school, I took a Spring Break trip to Dallas. My friend’s mother took us all to Saltgrass Steak House². As I wrote this, I had to google to see if “steak house” was one word or two, y’all. The struggle is real. Anyway, at 18, I couldn’t decipher the menu. My family didn’t eat steak, and if we did, I don’t remember us discussing cuts. I was too self-conscious to ask for help, so I ordered a chicken fried steak - a move that baffled the rest of the table. I can still feel my face flush as I maintained that “I just really like it”. Sheer mortification.

Fast forward to 2015ish, when I’m doing the “consultant dinners in Brooklyn” life on a semi-regular basis. This is where I learned that “hake” is a fish. Thank you, Leigh Anne Fraley, for not making me feel stupid for asking. I’ve never forgotten that kindness. Our company culture was such that people discussed favorite cheeses, NPR, and name-brand tote bags. I didn’t even know who Tory Burch was! How do you expect to even be a business traveler?! On my first solo consulting trip, my credit card was declined because I never used it, and it had a limit of $1100. I had to CALL MY BOSS and ask for her company card. More or less mortifying than the chicken fried steak incident?

Geography: I’ve written about being an Okie before, and it’s a deep pillar of my identity. There was definitely a year where I did all my Christmas shopping at the Love’s gas station in Atoka. There’s a Garth poster on our living room wall too. I do want to draw a fine distinction here. Oklahoma has never fit neatly into being Southern or Midwestern or Southwestern. While I write as The Korean Southerner, Oklahoma hospitality shades a little differently. Southern hospitality is mostly sugar, little substance. Okies are more about the substance, less about the sophistication. Exhibit A: When I was consulting in Tulsa, I often had little bathroom chats with my clients. While we were both peeing.

Do you talk to the people in the bathroom stalls next to you? I’m here to tell you that it happens way more often in Oklahoma than anywhere else I’ve lived. The genuine sincerity and lack of pretense is one of the best things about my home state. I know several Okies are reading this, and to you I say, you keep on with those bathroom chats. It’s disarming and vulnerable and tells people you’re happy to know them.

We often use caterpillar/butterfly metaphors to describe growing up, but they’re all wrong. We never shed our former selves. Instead, we are trees, growing rings while our core remains. The progress is too slow to visibly monitor. I ordered a chicken fried steak at 18, and somehow at 32, I prefer prime ribeye with marbling. At 40, I’m warbling “John Deere Green” as I lie sideways in the shower with grout smeared on my legs. Blame it all on my roots³.

A note of gratitude: This post would have never existed if not for our dear neighbor/friend Daniel. He encouraged us that the shower project would be a good confidence builder, showed us how, loaned us tools, and did the extremely fussy job of caulking himself. Also, he listened to me ramble about class for a while and added his thoughts too. We are blessed to do life with such great people.

What class do you consider yourself to be in, and why? Do you identify that way because of wealth, mannerisms, geography, or all three?

1. Parental guilt aside, the prison system is deliberately rigged, as detailed in the documentary 13th. I also believe drug addiction is largely a result of trauma, and The Myth of Normal details that extensively.

2. I only name-dropped Saltgrass because it is one of the reasons that James and I even met, so it’s an invisible string through my life. To the 2-3 Swifties who follow this blog: you’re welcome.

3. There are two categories of people here. Those who instantly know, and those who - like my beloved husband - are clueless. If you’re in the latter: “Blame it all on my roots” is the first line of the iconic song “Friends in Low Places”, sung by Garth Brooks, an Okie to his core. Either you read the subject line, smiled inwardly, and knew we were about to talk about Oklahoma, or…you’re in a different class of people.