Counting your blessings
It was just a cup of coffee, a way for friends with busy lives to sit and share. No agenda.
“Well, it’s almost over,” he hesitated and then said, “again.”
“I know what you mean,” I added.
A litany of things done and yet to be done filled in the blanks. Food prepared, gifts purchased or made and given, decorations, Christmas cards … the list went on as we calculated the time and effort of the season.
“And I still have to put the ornaments away,” she said with a kind of resigned acknowledgement to the work that the Christmas season requires.
She was quiet for a while.
“You know, there is just too much stuff, too much. I don’t think my Mom spent as much time and effort as I do and I’ve really tried to make is less, but I guess I’m just a Yuletide failure at the concept of less is more.”
Well, pulling myself up to full whatever height I am now … aging stealing some of it to the compression of vertebrae…
“I agree.Same here, but I do think that there is hope. Let me tell you a story. Have you been to Phoebe’s lately?” I queried.
I didn’t let her answer as I was deep into the middle of my memory and fast into my tale.
Last week, I had lunch at Phoebes.
It was a trip back in time for me, a sweet remembrance of other times with friends when the friends’ conversations did not include medical updates.
Even more poignantly, another time when, after we had visited the pediatric orthopedist, my daughter, then a little girl, and I would take a reward lunch at Phoebes.
Last week, it was my spouse, my daughter, my two grandsons and I, sitting at one of the tables that overlooked Genesee Street.
The boys were fascinated by the upholstered banquette where they sat. I guess there are new things to wonder ever day when you are 6 and 8.
But it wasn’t lunch that drew us there; lunch was the preface. My daughter, the once little girl with scoliosis, was treating us to an experience- for- Christmas gift. She agreed with me. Christmas is too much stuff.
We were all going to see the Syracuse Stage production of the Wizard of Oz.
“How do you spell Oz”? I asked the youngest.
We ran the sounds of the alphabet and he decided that Oz was spelled, “WO”!
Laughing we pronounced WO several times and decided to revisit the sounds of Oz.
He drew pictures, his version , for me of the Cowardly Lion and the Tin Man on note paper that I had stashed in my purse.
“These are for you, Grandma, so you can know who they are in the play.”
Later, in the theater, he showed me the program and said, “Grandma, thank you for helping me learn how to spell Oz.”
The boys were captivated as were the adults.
I had all I could do to restrain myself from singing along.
“Over the Rainbow” was one of the songs I sang to my children every night when they were little.
Visions of the rocking chair in each child’s bedroom came unbidden with sweet lullaby memories.
During the intermission, my daughter leaned forward … We were sitting in the row in front of her and the boys … and said, “Do you know what Tommy did last night?” She went on to tell me this story.
Tommy was downstairs watching TV while his mother was upstairs folding clothes.
He came upstairs with a serious look on his face and told her that he had seen a request on television for people to send money to help dogs and cats that were left outside or were abandoned or were starving.
“I want to help,” he said. “ I have money in my piggy bank.”
He left the room. He came back with his bank and told his mother that he wanted to give $20 to help the animals.
His mother, full of pride and holding back tears, said that he could do that. They would match his 20 and bring the money to one of the organizations that need help.
“Oh, that is so sweet,” my friend said.
Can I share in this? She reached into her purse and handed me a $20 bill.
“That is more like Christmas.”
“Tommy will be thrilled.”
We will match that $20 also.
I was so overcome with something that is hard to capture with words. Pride? Maybe, but that is self-serving.
It is something about passing on belief, about sending messages into the future about what is right. And, yes, I do take some credit for the nurturing that my daughter re- enacts with her children.
She is not a carbon copy of us, but she has taken some of our view of how the world should work and passed it on. Tommy has accepted this tender vision of how we live in this world. I am, at some point, overwhelmed with a word I can’t find. Joy? At Christmas, joy is appropriate.
And when I sit today and list those things for which I am grateful, among them will be the sweet attention to detail and exuberance of Will’s spelling and caring, and for Tommy and his parents who gave him this kindness and compassion…for being the parent of the parent and the grandparent of the children — these top the list.
in a world that sometimes makes me catch a stitch in my throat, wondering how so much has become petty and vulgar and dross … I must not lose sight of these precious examples of what is good and kind and real.
When my friend and I wrapped up our coffee time, we hugged, promised to get together more often and smiled ourselves home with warm thoughts of the many blessings we have been given.
