A walking Norman Rockwell portfolio, that was us. We were descended on both sides from a long line of teachers, preachers, and farmers. My father worked as a salesman for various companies, beginning with H. J. Heinz in the Depression, symbolized by a giant pickle. All through our childhood he was so loyal that I didn't discover Campbell's soups until I was married. As he changed jobs, we changed houses, and by the time I entered high school, we had lived in eight different neighborhoods, stretching across Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa. And that's where our personalities developed. Like the roads in Iowa as seen from a plane, all coming together at perfect right angles, the men and women of American Gothic lived their lives square and true.
"We were raised not to think but to be sensitive to what we suspected everybody else was thinking. We were the original other-directed family, with supple spines ready to bend at a moment's notice. What will the doctor think if you cry (that it hurts, maybe)? What will the teacher think if your knees are dirty? What will Grandma think if she doesn't hear from us soon? What will the minister think if we're late again? What will the neighbors think if they see you and Ted kissing on the porch"
"We became master detectives of everyone's feelings but our own.
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