I also play this game in the classified ads. I like to browse what’s for sale right now and wish…
If I were buying a puppy tonight, I would want it to be one of these.
I love little schnauzers!
Monday, September 15, 2008
The Puppy Game
Elsa and I visit the pet store after school a couple days a week and play “If we were getting a doggie now, which one would it be?”
I also play this game in the classified ads. I like to browse what’s for sale right now and wish…
If I were buying a puppy tonight, I would want it to be one of these.
I love little schnauzers!
I also play this game in the classified ads. I like to browse what’s for sale right now and wish…
If I were buying a puppy tonight, I would want it to be one of these.
I love little schnauzers!
Monday, September 8, 2008
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
A couple of weeks ago, when I took Elsa to Salt Lake, we passed a man holding a sign that said “will work for food” and, because I had no work to give him, we kept walking.
Elsa seemed oblivious to the man. In her consciousness, there is not yet anything significant about a man sitting on the sidewalk with a sign. She is unaware of the concept of pan handlers and can’t read. She did not know what it was we were walking past or why it mattered if we kept walking or not.
But with every step I took, I thought of my mother and how she tried to teach me better. There are too many times to recount that she gave up something she worked hard for to help someone else. Sometimes she helped people over long periods at great cost to herself, and sometimes she put what little money she had set aside for “fun” in to the hands of a man or woman on the street corner that she didn’t know.
And more than once, when I walked away with her and I knew her pockets were empty, and that we wouldn’t be going to lunch now ourselves, and that she had saved money to entertain me rather than buying herself a new dress (she was a teacher and wore the same few dresses to school day after day—I know the kids teased her), and that now our entertainment money was gone too. And she would tell me that we were lucky because next month we could count on having that much money again and that we knew we would eat every month.
She also told me we should not pat ourselves on the back because we had shared, because that man or that woman would get maybe one or two meals and still sleep outside and we would go home and use our kitchen to eat too much, sleep in warm beds and watch tv and listen to our radio and have a pretty good life. She would tell me that giving her extra money away was nothing to be proud of, and that if I really wanted to do the least of what the Lord expected from us, we would not go home to those comforts but instead give all of the extra food and luxuries to people who didn’t have enough. Of course, she never expected me to do that, but she wanted me to understand that as little as I may have felt we had in comparison to some people, we always had a lot more than we needed.
Teaching by example is a lot harder than I thought it would be. Doing what I was shown was right is proving pretty hard too. One of the things I revere my mother for is her genuine selflessness. Not only does he firmly believe in sharing ever thing she has, but she does, even when she has so little, and even when she greatly feels the loss of what she gives away. My mother has changed a lot over the years, but that is one characteristic that has not changed at all.
I know this is something she has tried to instill in me. I have tried to let her, but I am still very selfish, and lazy, and proud. Sometimes I don’t share. Sometimes I put vanity and fashion above sharing. I am ashamed of what people around will think if I put money into the hands of a homeless man. I don’t want to be thought of as stupid and I would be mortified if some well dressed stranger were to pass and say I had just supported a drug habit.
It’s easy for me to think about how much I have to leave my child while I go to work to get just barely enough for us to live on. It’s easy to lament the things I can no longer afford and to feel entitled to hand on to the power to procure the little treasures I can. It’s easy to resent the feeling that this person with the sign may well have, probably did, begin an alcohol habit that put them there anyway. It’s easy to assure myself I don’t have to suffer because they chose to beg rather than work. But it’s also easy to hear my mother’s voice teaching me that when a person needs help, I have been asked to help and not given the authority to judge.
As an adult, I have walked away more often than I have done what I should do. Sometimes it’s because I don’t want to spare what I have for myself, sometimes it’s because I have made Elsa a promise I can’t fulfill unless I pinch my pennies, and sometimes it’s because I am embarrassed.
I once watched a mother and her son push a beat up old car to a gas station pump in the rain. I heard her instruct him to stay in the car with the small children until she got back with some money. I stood between the protection of an overhang and my car as my tank was filled and I knew that I had more than enough means to slide my credit card in the pump by her car, and save her the walk and what ever else she had to do. But I was too ashamed to offer because I did not know how to do so with the same amount of respect and humility my mother would have shown this woman. I would have seemed arrogant to this woman I know. I would have made her feel as though I wanted to be her savior; my mother would have known how to make the woman feel as if she were her sister instead. So I watched her walk away in to the storm.
I like Elsa because she calls me on my shortcomings. I like her for other reasons too. She’s a pretty likable person, once you get past the thing where she is always telling you what’s wrong with ya.
K, here is the thing about being a parent: not only do you become your mother or father when you talk to your kids, but you have to start following your parents’ rules again too. For instance, if your mom and dad did not allow you to have ice cream in the middle of the day for no good reason, then you will probably not let your little kid have it any old time she wants either. BUT, this actually means that YOU can no longer have ice cream in the middle of the day when ever you want either. And then when your little kid is someplace other than home, you think “cool, I can so just have ice cream” and not get busted, but you have to sneak and so when your kids are gone it’s a lot like when your parents were gone.
Elsa’s always bossing me around too, “Mom, don’t bite your nails if I can’t?” “How come you can say THAT word and I can’t?” “Why aren’t YOU going to bed then if it’s so late?”
I can’t tell you how many times the kids has reminded me to hold on to my temper, get things cleaned up, be kind in my out loud thoughts about others, be temperate in my indulgences, and not to wear anything that makes me “look like a boy.”
Fortunately, all it takes to be forgiven by Elsa is a confession and an apology. “Mommy is sorry she borrowed a quarter from your piggy bank” and “I am sorry I ate your Easter candy” and “I am sorry I forgot to get that thing wanted me to get at the store.” She shrugs her shoulders and says, “It’s ok.” And more often than not, that’s that.
We had walked nearly a block away from the man and the sign when I stopped. The voice in my head had been good natured at first, “coward” it had said when I passed the man. As I walked though, it screamed, “You are not becoming the woman you were taught to be.” And then it said, “You are not raising her to be the woman you were taught to be either.”
I kneeled beside Elsa. I wanted to prepare her for something that was going to seem strange and I did not want any questions in a moment that would surely be awkward enough. I told her that the man back there with a sign did not have enough money to get anything to eat and that we had had such a nice day already. I suggested maybe we skip the ice cream and give him the money. She was shocked, but too my relief it was not at the thought of self sacrifice. She was amazed that some man did not have enough to eat. She nodded and we went back to him and handed him our ice cream money. I tried to say what my mother would have said. He clasped the bills in a severely blistered hand and said “God Bless you” dutifully.
As we walked back to the train I told Elsa that when I was a little girl, it was very important to “Sukey” (the name she calls my mother instead of Grandma) that I learned that sometimes I should give up the little things I wanted so that I could help someone else. I told her that that was what Jesus asked us to do. And she told me that that must be because Jesus loves “EVERYBODY in the world”. I was amazed at how easily she accepted that this was the right thing to do.
It made me wonder what was going on in her head for the silent few minutes we had spent, but after sitting at the train stop waiting without talking for a little while, she said, “Mommy? Why did you walk past that man before you went back to give him the money.”
I have often lied to my child. I have sometimes told her the truth. I have never teetered so long trying to figure out which way to go. I usually know instantly how honest I want to be.
I said, “I wasn’t sure at first if I wanted to give him any. I had to think about it, but I decided it was the right thing to do.”
She shrugged as if the answer made perfect sense. That was that.
Elsa seemed oblivious to the man. In her consciousness, there is not yet anything significant about a man sitting on the sidewalk with a sign. She is unaware of the concept of pan handlers and can’t read. She did not know what it was we were walking past or why it mattered if we kept walking or not.
But with every step I took, I thought of my mother and how she tried to teach me better. There are too many times to recount that she gave up something she worked hard for to help someone else. Sometimes she helped people over long periods at great cost to herself, and sometimes she put what little money she had set aside for “fun” in to the hands of a man or woman on the street corner that she didn’t know.
And more than once, when I walked away with her and I knew her pockets were empty, and that we wouldn’t be going to lunch now ourselves, and that she had saved money to entertain me rather than buying herself a new dress (she was a teacher and wore the same few dresses to school day after day—I know the kids teased her), and that now our entertainment money was gone too. And she would tell me that we were lucky because next month we could count on having that much money again and that we knew we would eat every month.
She also told me we should not pat ourselves on the back because we had shared, because that man or that woman would get maybe one or two meals and still sleep outside and we would go home and use our kitchen to eat too much, sleep in warm beds and watch tv and listen to our radio and have a pretty good life. She would tell me that giving her extra money away was nothing to be proud of, and that if I really wanted to do the least of what the Lord expected from us, we would not go home to those comforts but instead give all of the extra food and luxuries to people who didn’t have enough. Of course, she never expected me to do that, but she wanted me to understand that as little as I may have felt we had in comparison to some people, we always had a lot more than we needed.
Teaching by example is a lot harder than I thought it would be. Doing what I was shown was right is proving pretty hard too. One of the things I revere my mother for is her genuine selflessness. Not only does he firmly believe in sharing ever thing she has, but she does, even when she has so little, and even when she greatly feels the loss of what she gives away. My mother has changed a lot over the years, but that is one characteristic that has not changed at all.
I know this is something she has tried to instill in me. I have tried to let her, but I am still very selfish, and lazy, and proud. Sometimes I don’t share. Sometimes I put vanity and fashion above sharing. I am ashamed of what people around will think if I put money into the hands of a homeless man. I don’t want to be thought of as stupid and I would be mortified if some well dressed stranger were to pass and say I had just supported a drug habit.
It’s easy for me to think about how much I have to leave my child while I go to work to get just barely enough for us to live on. It’s easy to lament the things I can no longer afford and to feel entitled to hand on to the power to procure the little treasures I can. It’s easy to resent the feeling that this person with the sign may well have, probably did, begin an alcohol habit that put them there anyway. It’s easy to assure myself I don’t have to suffer because they chose to beg rather than work. But it’s also easy to hear my mother’s voice teaching me that when a person needs help, I have been asked to help and not given the authority to judge.
As an adult, I have walked away more often than I have done what I should do. Sometimes it’s because I don’t want to spare what I have for myself, sometimes it’s because I have made Elsa a promise I can’t fulfill unless I pinch my pennies, and sometimes it’s because I am embarrassed.
I once watched a mother and her son push a beat up old car to a gas station pump in the rain. I heard her instruct him to stay in the car with the small children until she got back with some money. I stood between the protection of an overhang and my car as my tank was filled and I knew that I had more than enough means to slide my credit card in the pump by her car, and save her the walk and what ever else she had to do. But I was too ashamed to offer because I did not know how to do so with the same amount of respect and humility my mother would have shown this woman. I would have seemed arrogant to this woman I know. I would have made her feel as though I wanted to be her savior; my mother would have known how to make the woman feel as if she were her sister instead. So I watched her walk away in to the storm.
I like Elsa because she calls me on my shortcomings. I like her for other reasons too. She’s a pretty likable person, once you get past the thing where she is always telling you what’s wrong with ya.
K, here is the thing about being a parent: not only do you become your mother or father when you talk to your kids, but you have to start following your parents’ rules again too. For instance, if your mom and dad did not allow you to have ice cream in the middle of the day for no good reason, then you will probably not let your little kid have it any old time she wants either. BUT, this actually means that YOU can no longer have ice cream in the middle of the day when ever you want either. And then when your little kid is someplace other than home, you think “cool, I can so just have ice cream” and not get busted, but you have to sneak and so when your kids are gone it’s a lot like when your parents were gone.
Elsa’s always bossing me around too, “Mom, don’t bite your nails if I can’t?” “How come you can say THAT word and I can’t?” “Why aren’t YOU going to bed then if it’s so late?”
I can’t tell you how many times the kids has reminded me to hold on to my temper, get things cleaned up, be kind in my out loud thoughts about others, be temperate in my indulgences, and not to wear anything that makes me “look like a boy.”
Fortunately, all it takes to be forgiven by Elsa is a confession and an apology. “Mommy is sorry she borrowed a quarter from your piggy bank” and “I am sorry I ate your Easter candy” and “I am sorry I forgot to get that thing wanted me to get at the store.” She shrugs her shoulders and says, “It’s ok.” And more often than not, that’s that.
We had walked nearly a block away from the man and the sign when I stopped. The voice in my head had been good natured at first, “coward” it had said when I passed the man. As I walked though, it screamed, “You are not becoming the woman you were taught to be.” And then it said, “You are not raising her to be the woman you were taught to be either.”
I kneeled beside Elsa. I wanted to prepare her for something that was going to seem strange and I did not want any questions in a moment that would surely be awkward enough. I told her that the man back there with a sign did not have enough money to get anything to eat and that we had had such a nice day already. I suggested maybe we skip the ice cream and give him the money. She was shocked, but too my relief it was not at the thought of self sacrifice. She was amazed that some man did not have enough to eat. She nodded and we went back to him and handed him our ice cream money. I tried to say what my mother would have said. He clasped the bills in a severely blistered hand and said “God Bless you” dutifully.
As we walked back to the train I told Elsa that when I was a little girl, it was very important to “Sukey” (the name she calls my mother instead of Grandma) that I learned that sometimes I should give up the little things I wanted so that I could help someone else. I told her that that was what Jesus asked us to do. And she told me that that must be because Jesus loves “EVERYBODY in the world”. I was amazed at how easily she accepted that this was the right thing to do.
It made me wonder what was going on in her head for the silent few minutes we had spent, but after sitting at the train stop waiting without talking for a little while, she said, “Mommy? Why did you walk past that man before you went back to give him the money.”
I have often lied to my child. I have sometimes told her the truth. I have never teetered so long trying to figure out which way to go. I usually know instantly how honest I want to be.
I said, “I wasn’t sure at first if I wanted to give him any. I had to think about it, but I decided it was the right thing to do.”
She shrugged as if the answer made perfect sense. That was that.
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