Dad, the Anti-Hippie1 Hippie 反嬉皮文化的“嬉皮士”_BEC初级作文

Dad, the Anti-Hippie1 Hippie 反嬉皮文化的“嬉皮士”

Recently, like the agonizingly slow-to-illuminate CFLs at my parents’ house, a light switched on in my consciousness: I was not the environmental paragon of the family.13 My dad was. My coupon-clipping, “I’m no tree-hugger” father was the real deal, and I had only been mimicking a way of life espoused by reasonably educated people who loved recycling and traveled to Alaska and had at one point slapped a Save the Whales, Save the Humans, or “I don’t eat anything with a face” sticker on their cars.14 I was an imposter armed with little more than my canvas totes and an impressive vocabulary of stuff that shouldn’t be in shampoo.15

My dad doesn’t have a silicone-wrapped glass water bottle, or bamboo sheets, and yet he’s managed to harness the meaning of real stewardship: Live on less, wear your clothes until they wear out (I’m pretty sure half his shirts were purchased while Nixon was in office), catch your own dinner.16

Growing up, I remember there were a few quotations tacked to the bulletin board in the kitchen. The one I remember most was from Wordsworth, and my dad quoted it often: “Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers.”17 I’m finally trying to take my dad’s lead18 and live more simply, buy less instead of buying green. Six years later, my husband and I are now sharing that same Prius.

This past summer I visited my parents for a few weeks. While I was there, I watched my dad bring items he no longer needed to our church’s basement (a low-tech Freecycle operation), take his own mug to the diner, pick chives from the garden, and dig quahogs to make into chowder he stored away for winter.19 With the air in the kitchen rustic and salty with the smell of clams, I told him he was part of the slow food movement.20