Ofermod

“Now, tell me one difference,” my sister says, “between Old English and New English.” Well, Old English has a word for our kind of people:ofermod, literally “overmind,” or “overheart,” or “overspirit,” often translated “overproud.” When the warrior Byrhtnoth, overfool, invited the Vikings across the ford at Maldon to fight his smaller troop at closer range, his overpride proved deadlier than the gold-hilted and file-hard swords the poet gleefully describes — and aren’t we like that, high-strung and ofermod as our daddy and granddaddies and everybody else in our stiff-necked mountain town, always with something stupid to prove, doing 80 all the way to the head of the holler, weaving through the double lines; splinting a door-slammed finger with popsicle sticks and electrical tape; not filling out the forms for food stamps though we know we qualify. Sister, I’ve seen you cuss rivals, teachers, doctors, bill collectors, lawyers, cousins, strangers at the red light or the Walmart; you start it, you finish it, you everything-in-between-it, whether it’s with your fists, or a two-by-four, or a car door, and it doesn’t matter that your foe’s stronger, taller, better armed. I don’t tell a soul when I’m down to flour and tuna and a half-bag of beans, so you’ve not seen me do without just to do without, just for spite at them who told us, “It’s a sin to be beholden.” If you’re Byrhtnoth lying gutted on the ground, speechifying at the troops he’s doomed, then I’m the idiot campaigner fighting beside his hacked-up lord instead of turning tail, insisting, “Mind must be the harder, heart the keener, spirit the greater, as our strength lessens.” Now, don’t that sound familiar? We’ve bought it all our lives as it’s been sold by drunkards, bruisers, goaders, soldiers, braggers with a single code: you might be undermined, girl, but don’t you never be undermod.