Do Unto Others

We are vacationing with a group of friends. Each family is staying at their own beach house which are linked together like gems on a bracelet. Our family stops at the real estate office where we pay our balance of the rent and receive the key to our beach cottage. We are happily moving in when our friend and neighbor for the week stops by, his nerves a little on edge. He is without the key to his cottage and stops to count his money on our kitchen counter. It turns out he has forgotten his checkbook and if he uses all his cash to pay the rent he will have only a few dollars left for his family’s vacation. We, however, have our checkbook and much to our friend’s discomfort, we insist on writing a check for him. He is embarrassed and reluctant to accept even though he realizes it is his only alternative. He concedes only because he is in a bind. I want to put him at ease and so I ask him, “Would you do the same for us?” I recognize in his relief that he would be happy to help us out had we forgotten our checkbook. With this new perspective, his worry is put to rest because what we feel in our hearts is what he feels in his.

I usually pride myself on my independence and self-sufficiency. This day I have already hiked a fair distance in ski boots, carrying two sets of skis and herding two young children. When I arrive at the ticket office, I realize I have miscalculated and I am short the necessary funds to buy everyone a ski pass. Mildly in a panic, I will have to get on the shuttle, return to the car for the needed money. But then I remember I have a friend who works here and I ask her humbly for help. Without letting me finish my explanation, she hands me the lift ticket I can’t afford. To ease my embarrassment I silently ask myself if I would do the same for her. Of course I would, because what she feels in her heart is what I feel in mine.

Ski passes. Vacation homes. As much as I appreciated the help and loved giving help, I ask myself, “How out of touch can a person be?” There are people without food and homes who need my help. I guess the real question that needs to be asked is “What can I do for those who can never do for me?”

The Window I really Wanted

“Grandma Pat wants a gas tanker for her birthday.” Max, age 3

I am Grandma Pat and from Max’s point of view, who could want anything else?

I've been thinking about the things we want and the perspective from which our wants spring forth and land into someone else’s arms in the form of a present.

For my husband’s birthday one year, I commissioned a painting of our four children. I found a skilled artist who charged a reasonable price for a beautiful painting. With great anticipation, I presented the painting to my husband who was pleased but did not react in the way I had hoped. Had he asked for a painting? Only after a hard look at self, did I realize I was the one who wanted the painting.

This past September, I started working on a stained glass window for my husband’s office. It was to be his Christmas gift. I chose his favorite colors and carefully designed the Celtic knots and varying patterns of clear glass. It was finished in the usual pre-Christmas rush. With great anticipation, I presented the window to my husband who was pleased but did not react in the way I had hoped. Did he want a stained glass window? Only after a hard look at self, did I realize I was the one who wanted the window.

These two instances shine a different light on the thought that when you give, you really do give a part of yourself. Having given too much of my self, I decided I needed to give a present that I didn't want and the present had to be something I knew the receiver really wanted. So, I ordered a 1993 Exxon gas tanker in little-boy size. Max should get it in the mail by week’s end and I have asked his mother to pass on this note when it arrives, “ Hey Max, Grandma got a gas tanker for her birthday, but since I am through playing with it, I have sent it to you. Enjoy.”

After filling up my gas tank today, at $3.30 a gallon, I realized that Max perhaps was much more intuitive than I had originally thought. A full gas tanker would actually be a very nice present.

Portable Phones or Two Chickens In Every Pot

Once upon a time… in the late 1960’s… in the home of my childhood…there was one black rotary-dial phone on the kitchen counter. As a child, I thought my mom spent too much time on this phone, but at least I always knew where she was. In the early 1970’s this phone was updated to a blue rotary dial phone. It matched our kitchen counters and was a vast improvement in aesthetics. It was like going from corrective shoes to glass slippers.

It wasn’t long before my sister and I required our own private telephone line in our own bedroom. I still remember the number and with a twinkle of pride that it was a pink princess phone. When my sister and I graduated to separate bedrooms, her phone was a blue princess.

My husband and I have raised four daughters in the home of our middle age, where the modus operandi of phone use consists of the portable phone. The portable phone has caused untold frustration in the late 1990’s and I am guessing through the year 2011, when our youngest daughter will graduate from high school. My husband handled the problem of the constantly missing phones in the same way he handled his constantly missing combs. He bought a HUGE bag. Suddenly there was a plethora of combs, in drawers, cupboards, cars, in between the couch cushions; I even found a comb when cleaning under the fridge. My husband’s answer to the never-returned-to-the-cradle phone problem was to keep buying phones. Now there are two portable phones in every one of the five phone locations. Consequently, we just look for more phones, finding the plethora of portable phones in the same places: in between couch cushions, in the car, in drawers, but never under the fridge.

My husband gave each phone a location that prints clearly in the same screen that identifies the caller. I used to spend an inordinate amount of time replacing these phones in their proper location. In theory, it was a good idea: every phone in its place, every place with a phone. At first, it bothered my husband to find the phone that read “basement” in the location, “master bedroom.” It didn’t take long for him to feel euphoric when there was any phone in a cradle—it didn’t matter where it came from.

Last night we hit an all time low in phone management. Our 13 year old daughter decided to rearrange her bedroom. This included moving her bed. My husband, with resigned defeat, came to tell me that there were 5 phones under Paloma’s bed--and that didn’t include the one I already put back, (when I saw it hiding under her dust ruffle), (before she moved the bed), (earlier that day).

Five Weeks To Save Their Souls

I have always taken things too seriously. Thank Goodness.

There was a Matthew in every one of my six English classes. The Matthews chose to slump away from their desks and looked physically uncomfortable in their seats- a metaphor for how they felt about life. One particular Matthew would enter class, on time, hidden under the hood of his jacket, tuned out but tuned in to his Ipod. When class started I would catch his attention, smile and motion for him to take out his earphones. He always complied. When I taught, he never looked my way. His attendance was perfect though he didn’t do the assignments. He never interrupted and he never caused a problem. Once in a while, he would look at me but when I looked back he retreated like a turtle into his shell. He tried very hard to stay disconnected, but not hard enough.

One day, for no apparent reason (hindsight would clarify this), I told the class a story about a college friend of mine whose name was David. One evening, David went out to the garage where he kept his 1970 Chevy Impala. The car was a gift from his grandfather and was so valuable that David couldn’t afford the insurance. Consequently, he drove the car infrequently, only for special occasions or an occasional date. When David opened the garage where the car was stored over the summer, he was surprised to find it empty. David promptly called his friends and a brother to inquire if someone had borrowed the Impala without asking. No one had. David called the police and was told that a band of car thieves had traveled through town on a thieving rampage.

A month later, David came to French class excited to tell the rest of the story. A man employed by the BLM, found the Impala dumped on government land. It was beat up, but he asked his boss if he could have the car to fix up and see if it worked. The boss said “sure.”

The man had the car re-keyed and detailed. He bought a new battery, had the upholstery fixed, bought new hubcaps and did a few other fix-ups.

As I retold David’s story to my tenth grade English class, I noticed that Matthew was listening to and looking at me. He was engaged for the first time since class had started. I finished the story with the BLM employee going to the DMV to register his fabulous find. But, the car came up STOLEN. My friend David got his car back in better condition than when he owned it.

A few days later, Matthew looked up and asked, “Do you have any more car stories?”

“I don’t Matthew, but I’ll try to find one. You must love cars.” That day Matthew told me about the cars that he and his father had restored. He told me about the car his mother ruined. By week three, Matthew was coming early into class and putting his backpack in a chair to save his place. The hood on his sweatshirt rested on his back, he engaged in and offered insight into the discussions. He told me he didn’t need to look up the vocabulary words because he already knew what they meant. I doubted him, so we walked through the words together and he was able to give me a definition for nine of the ten words. He was revealing his intelligence. By week four, Matthew was coming early to class to finish his lunch. Matt became a friend.

The previous weeks of class were spent reading Rodman Philbrick’s Freak the Mighty. Each student was required to keep a workbook of their own making with details of the book: Chapter synopsis, main characters, settings, vocabulary, descriptions and character changes. I also asked them to keep a page or chart on themselves, three columns labeled: characteristics, experiences and changes. I explained that a component of Good literature is character change. Life is like good literature.

My fourth week of teaching, I asked the students to write a one page journal write, explaining the details of the chart they kept on themselves. It was simple, write about your characteristics and what events or experiences that made you change. Matt raised his hand and asked, “What if it’s too personal?” I wanted this to be a growing experience, so I gave students the option of showing me their work without turning it in. Matt lowered his eyes and started to write. About half-way through the fifteen minute writing exercise, he told me that he’d changed his mind and he wanted me to read his paper. By the time he’d finished he had decided that he wanted me to read his paper to the whole class because it would help them understand why he acted the way he did.

I took the papers home for the weekend. Every time I walked past my briefcase, I winced. What terrible things would Matt reveal? What would explain his laissez-faire attitude towards life? Saturday evening I bolstered the courage to read Matt’s paper. Matt wrote, When I was seven or eight years old, I was accused of molesting other children. I was almost taken out of my home and put in foster care. THIS IS WHY I HATE ALL PEOPLE. For the rest of the weekend I worried about Matt.

My final week. Matt came to class early. I handed him the letter I had written to him (enclosed), expressed my sorrow for the hurt he endured as a child, gave him my explanation for not reading his paper to the class and presented the best plan I could create for him as his English teacher. I wanted him to think about the difference between a wound and a scar. He started to explain the difference when I interrupted him and told him he was to think about it for the next two days. His next class period, I wanted him to journal write the difference between a wound and a scar. He was silent and then sweetly agreed to the task.

Last day of class. The students were writing a book review for Freak the Mighty. Matt and I acknowledged with a nod of the head that his assignment was different. Five minutes into the assignment, Matt called out to me, “You’re going to like this.”

With ten minutes left of class, the students had finished their assignment. There was a party atmosphere for my last day. Matt reminded me, “I think you’re really going to like what I’ve written.” He paused, “What should I do with my other paper? Should I burn it?”

The magnitude of what he said caused me to pause and think. And then I said, “Matt you can keep it or you can burn it, but if you burn it, make it a ritual, a letting go. Do you know what I mean?”

Matt nodded his head. “Yes, I know what you mean.”

I stayed after school that day to finish grading and recording the student’s work. I wanted to be completely finished with my five weeks. I had done my best and I didn’t want to hang on to what I was losing. I was sad that I could no longer show my enthusiasm for the beauty and power of words to high school students who stayed up too late over the weekend. I would miss the students, their original metaphors, their complaints about Huckleberry Finn, and the look in their eyes when they thought in a different way. I would miss their growth and their failures. Most of all I would miss the possibilities of change and discovery that came from thinking through and writing words. As I evaluated my objective, ‘five weeks to save their souls,’ I laughed at my crusade mentality. I couldn’t save their souls-- but I could provide an environment and some tools so hopefully, they could save themselves.

Self-Discovery

It is the night before we return to America, so my husband exchanges every EU dollar minus the small amount needed for the short taxi ride to the bus stop and train tickets to the airport in Amsterdam. The bus tickets that will take us to the train station were already purchased in an economical book of ten fares.

We have come to Holland to bike the tulip season and to celebrate more than two decades of marriage and my forty-fifth birthday. Our home base is Noordwijk aan zee. We have a beautiful room with doors that open to the sea.
Each day we pedal to a different destination; Haarlem, the home of Carrie Ten Boom, Keukenhof, the garden with millions of tulips; Leiden, the ancient village with the oldest running outdoor market.

Each day is series of discoveries or take-your-breath-away moments such as when we turn a corner and see an unexpected ocean of yellow and red tulips. However, it is the morning that our taxi pulls up to the bus stop that I have the most enjoyable surprise, for travel is as much a discovery of self, as it is of people, of culture, and land.

Through a series of unfortunate events led by a national holiday that closes banks, and changes bus schedules, my husband and I are stranded at the train station without Eu dollars. Our carefully calculated money was spent on the taxi that agreed to bring us farther than expected and for less than the charge.
The train ticket vendors will take neither credit cards, nor American dollars. We have one commodity: our unused bus tickets. There is only one option and after a moment of self-reflection, I am standing outside the station trying to sell our tickets. The comedy is that today is my birthday and I couldn’t have imagined a scenario like this.

A wonderful thing happens when you reach the mid-life meridian or so I’ve been told. Well-wishing friends expressed this in tenets such as: “I love middle aged women because they know what they want and they are not afraid to get it,” or “When I turned forty-five I finally didn’t care what other people thought.” These are words of encouragement as I stand in a foreign country desperate to sell some bus tickets.

Finally, a young woman allows me to tell my story. She recognizes the bargain, and hands me enough euro for two train tickets.

With relief, we board the train.

It is almost fate’s purpose to remind or reward me for this forty five year old awakening. As I previously wrote, we left Holland on my birthday. When we arrive home the next morning, with the change in time zones, we have gained a day and it is my birthday all over again!

After The Storm

We arrived on Sanibel Island on a Saturday evening and the first thing I did was walk to the beach and see if it was the paradisaical shelling glory I had read about and imagined. Littered and glittering in the sand was an abundance of shell pieces and a full scallop here and there. My homework before coming to the island, had taught that the real shell seeker had to get up early with a flashlight to find the best shells. I wasn't ready to do that yet.

We awoke Sunday morning to wind and overcast skies. It rained furiously through the day and the ocean was angry; one could almost imagine Poseidon stirring it with his trident. We hunkered down in the condo and watched the rain pelt our windows. The gale force winds and the blue evacuation signs that dotted the roads led me to wonder if it wasn't the beginning of an early hurricane.

Monday was a delightful surprise. The sea was calm and we were greeted with sporadic springtime showers between the sunshine. It was later afternoon when we headed to the water to search for seashells. The tide was low and there was an abundance of shells. We soon discovered that ankle deep in the light surf, we could reach down and scoop up a handful of seashells. In that scoop was at least one lightning whelk or a fighting conch. It was cold and we didn't stay long, but I left the beach with a million plans for the beautiful shells I would be taking home.

The next afternoon, full of hope and expectation, I again waded into the water, ankle deep. My mechanical probe toes, searching for piles of shells, felt nothing but the cold compacted sand and the occasional seashell fragment; the plethora of yesterday was gone.

That night I set my alarm for 6:30 a.m. . Having tasted what could be found, I would become one of the early morning beachcombers with flashlight in hand. I came home a little embarrassed with myself and only a few shells in the pocket of my not-so-discreet pajama bottoms.

It was the next day that we learned from a frequent visitor to Sanibel about the shelling glory of the day after the storm. In his thick southern accent, he explained that Monday was a shelling day like "no other." The storm had whipped up the sea, dislodging, picking up the discarded homes of the ocean dwellers.

The storm unleashed the beauty for which I had come to Sanibel. It was only after the storm that the most beautiful shells could be found. I thought of my own trials and pressures and the question I always ask myself amidst adversity: What kind of person will I become from this experience?

I walked away from Sanibel with more than a handful of shells.

May All Your Fences Have Gates

“Meet me at the fence,” was the most common telephone phrase shared between our neighbor, Helen, and the baking members of our family. During the 1960’s, last minute shopping wasn’t always an option as our family had one car and dad had taken it to work. We met our neighbor at the fence for a cube of butter or an egg and the conversations that I took for granted as a child, but remember fondly as an adult.

When one sister inquired of the other, “Where’s mom?” the other would answer “check the fence.” More often than not, mom was standing at the low fence talking and laughing with Helen. My grandfather, a mason by trade, built our fence, creating this knee-high meeting place where pathways from each house greeted each other naturally. He learned his skills in Switzerland where fences were built to last centuries. The rest of the fence was a six foot high wall of cinderblock that surrounded our house like a fortress. And perhaps it was to my parents, the protectors of their three little girls.

I hadn’t thought about my childhood fence until last spring when I discovered a neighbor building his own fence. I was moved by the beauty of his design and was reminded of Robert Frost’s poem, Mending Fences. The poem describes the author and his New England neighbor meeting in the spring to mend the stone fence between their properties. On the surface, it is a joyful retelling of a necessary chore, but the poem has become a metaphor for a myriad of human relationships and experiences. President John F. Kennedy is said to have quoted the first line from Mending Fences when he visited the Berlin wall in 1963, “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall.”

A fence is a part of our language as well as our landscape. To mend a fence means to resolve a conflict. To put up a fence describes an emotional barrier. To hurdle a fence defines a success. August Wilson wrote a Pulitzer Prize winning play about racism that was entitled Fences. As an African American man born in 1945, Wilson encountered the fences of prejudice first hand. Disgusted by the racist treatment he endured in school, he dropped out but was determined to educate himself in the local library. Wilson knew it was possible to overcome fences that others may erect, and to dissolve the fences that we may create. When asked to sign a copy of his play, he wished his young fan well by writing, May all your fences have gates.

Years ago, I followed a pathway along the cliffs of the Scottish coast. It was an enchanting world of vibrant green grass, grazing sheep and baby lambs. Along the way, I climbed on the ruins of an ancient castle and ate my sack lunch on its stone steps overlooking the North Sea. The sky was overcast and every breeze carried the scent of the sea. Every half-mile or so, my hiking companions and I would come to a fence. Fences are an integral part of the Scottish landscape given that grazing and farming at one time covered three quarters of the land and boundaries were an important part of building good relationships. But in spite of the fences, the hike was possible because there was either a gate or a rough wooden step to hop over.

In the past few months, I’ve thought a lot about fences. I cannot drive my car or ride my bike without noticing fences. Fences can be works of art or expressions of creativity, but mostly they serve as boundaries, to keep children safe or to keep the dog confined. Fences have shown me the kindness of strangers who allowed me to enter their yard, take a photograph and hear the story of their fence. Given the prevalence and power of fences, whether they are mental or physical, whether they hold back, hold in, divide, unite, or inspire, I think of Wilson’s phrase and try to implement it often. To you, the reader, I pass along the wish: may all your fences have gates.