Turning Green
I began a journey, a long, long time ago, and I’m really beginning to understand where it’s taking me now. That is to say, alot of things I’ve been absorbing since I was a little girl are beginning to make sense; I’m seeing how I want to implement them in my life and in my home. Things like watching my Grandmacita grow tomatoes and roses and plants innumerable in her front and back yards. Helping my mom plant snap dragons and pansies in our yard. Growing radishes, onions, and potatoes with my Dad in east Texas. My fascination with raking leaves as a young girl. Observing my grandmother save twisty ties and rubber bands in jars. Knowing that she woke up at like 5 o’clock in the morning to make a days worth of food for all of her children and grandchildren to eat. Taking handfuls of vitamins from my homeopathic mother. Only being allowed to eat one coke a week, and virtually never candy.
Then there was that class I took in college, Global Environmental Problems. It opened my eyes to the serious potential of global warming and other man-made environmental issues. There I met Allison, who literally rode her bike everywhere (in Texas, which is a feat) because she didn’t want to pollute the city she lived in by driving a car. After college, I worked for a non-profit in Dallas that was raising money to redevelop the Trinity River. I took trips to the south side of town and saw city blocks upon city blocks of rusted out cars in auto dumps, and also what a capped landfill looks like–a huge green grassy hill surrounded by a chain linked fence with barbed wire on top of it. A place that can’t be built on or turned into a park, for God knows how long, because as soon as someone punctures the soil, toxic waste spills out and contaminates everything.
Then I started to get sick. Starting in August 2007 (at the ripe age of 27) I had a series of allergic reactions to I didn’t know what that were making me MISERABLE. So I started reading up on the ingredients in every lotion, body wash, shampoo, shave gel, and any other cosmetic I was using. I was on a hunt to rid my body of any potential toxin and only to put in or on it what was totally natural and good. As my mother has said, “If you don’t want to eat it, don’t put it on your body.”
And so, my husband and I are going green. Conveniently, and cliche-y, when everyone else is too. But I hope to do much good in the process. I want our home, from the household and personal cleaning products we use to the food we eat to the waste we put out, to be as earth-friendly as we can make it. Not because it’s the hip thing to do, not because it makes us look good or righteous or whatever, but because it is the RIGHT thing to do. I see this as a stewardship issue. In the beginning, God told man to “fill the earth and subdue it”; he took him and “put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it” (Genesis 1:28, 2:15). In the Industrial and Post-industrial ages, I think we’ve done a pretty crappy job of taking care of our planet. And I want to change the way I live.
Stay posted for more green info. It’ll be coming in a steady-ish stream.