Playing the Fool

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With a direct nod to yesterday’s awesome “key” post by Gerb, I think I’d like to go down the same road a little bit today because of a similar experience.

Number two son and I stopped at a convenience store the other evening. It was dark, and getting colder, so while the boy ran into the store I stayed in the car to keep it warm. After a minute or so there was a knock on the car window and a young woman’s face peering in.

She was asking for money.

Did I have just $10 so that she could buy formula for her baby?

I never know what to do when that happens…and it’s happening more and more often; The young man asking for spare change outside the grocery store doors; the older man with the cardboard sign in the corner of the mall parking lot; the young woman outside the Maverick with a story about a fight with her boyfriend and a hungry baby.

Because of the stories that I’ve heard from the kids I work with and because I watch the news, I know that there’s a decent chance that I’m being scammed. There’s a chance that that young man outside the grocery score is trying to get enough money to score an oxycodone at the park across the street. The older man with the cardboard sign declaring himself to be veteran could just be a veteran of too many trips to the liquor store. And the young woman tapping on my window could be…who knows…working for someone else or simply playing a game to see how much money she could collect that evening.

But I find that even though thoughts like this filter through my head (along with a decent wave of fear like Gerb said) when confronted with this type of request. At the end of the day I don’t care. Maybe I am being played for a fool – but maybe I’m not.

For me, asking for help is really, really difficult. It is only by the grace of a benevolent God and good friends that I am not pushing all of my belongings around in a shopping cart. If these people have gotten to the point where they are asking for help from strangers for whatever reason, I can’t put myself in the position of judging the purity of their motives because I recognize that mortification can exist in the asking.

There’s an old proverb that says “Charity looks at the need, not the cause. And another that says in this world we must help one another. Their motives are their own and mine is not to question why. It is little enough when truly, I have been so blessed.

I gave her $20.

Knowledge Is The Key

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photo from ehow.com

Yesterday I had to run some errands at a local SuperStore. As I exited my car and tried to shove my keys into my purse I discovered that they would not fit. The keys were so bulky that I could not get them to fit inside my pockets, either. Dumb keys, I thought to myself as I threw them into the child-seat of my shopping cart.

Once my purchases were complete I made my exit. As I approached the corral for the shopping carts in the parking lot I noticed a man in tattered clothes sifting through a trash can there.

"You have a Merry Christmas!" he said to me, smiling. I grabbed my purchases from my cart, responded with, "You too!" and pushed my cart into the corral, hurrying towards my car.

I heard a voice from behind me.

"Miss! Wait! Miss!" the man called after me. I glanced over my shoulder and confirmed that it was the poorly dressed man who had just wished me a merry Christmas. To be honest, I was initially a bit frightened. Why was this man rushing towards me? Was he going to ask for money? Should I rush to my car and get inside?

I stopped near my car, turning to face him. "Yes?" I asked, still somewhat nervous as to his intentions.

"You left your keys in the cart," he said as he handed them to me, still smiling.

I sighed. I was grateful and told him so.

"I used to have keys," he told me. "I remember how much I hated to lose them."

In that moment it seemed as if a million questions passed through my mind. What had happened to bring him to his current state? Did he lose his job? Did he have a home somewhere? A family? What sorts of locks did he open with the keys he no longer had now?

But before I could say another word, he was walking away. "You have a good day, now," he said with a sideways wave.

"Thanks again. Thanks so much," I called after him.

I looked at my keys. Keys to my car(s!) and my home; keys to closets and safes. So many keys. Keys that I complain about when really, each key represents a comfort or blessing in my life.

I had never been so thankful for a bulky set of keys.

And thankful to the man who reminded me that I take too much for granted.

I never noticed that I no longer noticed

Pin It ...until the day it was gone.

Funny how that works out, isn’t it? Something in life becomes so commonplace that—after awhile—you simply no longer even perceive it anymore. For instance, that ring that you wear on your finger as a reminder of promises made, or the bottles of vitamins in the medicine cabinet that you should be taking each and every day.

That’s the way it was with the house.

I’d been driving on a particular stretch of road for the past 5 or 6 years on my way to work; after awhile, the road became so familiar to me that I’d be driving and my thoughts would wander. Before I knew it, I was pulling into my parking stall with little or no recollection of the events which had happened in between.

Kind of scary to be honest—but that’s the way it can sometimes be with things which are all too familiar.

A year ago I left on a trip for a hefty chunk of the summer, and when I returned I drove to work to get ready for the new school year which would be commencing in just a few weeks. As I drove along the once-familiar roadway, it felt strangely unfamiliar and fresh to me. It was like I was seeing it for the first time with new eyes.

When I reached a crossroads where I usually made a right turn, I looked straight ahead and noticed that the house was gone…I’d looked at this house for so many years, it had become a sort of permanent fixture in the surrounding landscape. To see it gone was bizarre.

I paused for a moment and stared at this now-vacant lot. The double story was at that instant, nonexistent.

I immediately thought of the family who’d once lived there; not that I’d ever known them…because I hadn’t. However, I had seen them having get-togethers during the long, lazy days of summer, and I’d seen their children occasionally standing out in the frosty mornings, awaiting the bus to take them to school.

A car horn sounded behind me, giving the prompting to complete my turn. As I drove, my mind catavaulted through the memory banks of time, and all I could recollect about this house.

However, the barren lot soon became the new permanent fixture in my mind’s eye. I forgot all about the house which had once occupied this space, and seeing the empty area became my new reality.

That is, until the day I noticed the garden.

Somewhere in the weeks and months which had flown by, someone had planted a garden where the foundation of the house used to be. Tall rows of corn reached toward the heavens while buttery-colored pumpkins and rosy tomatoes swelled to perfection. The garden was occupying the same space the house had. It was surreal. The two images seemed to flicker back and forth in my mind, like one of those holographic pictures which shows you one thing and then another, but both in the same space.

As I watched this garden grow over the ensuing months, I noticed the subtle changes as time progressed steadily onward. It was this garden which set me to thinking. (It seems that I do my best thinking in the early mornings while on my way someplace—usually work).

I thought of the garden growing in the place where the house had stood, and the family which had lived on that very piece of ground—like that garden, a family had once grown therein.

A family garden.

I found myself wondering about that family—wondering about myself. What kind of growth have I had over the years? What is it that I will reap at the harvest of my existence? Like that garden growing from the rich earth, the only things of value which will really come of it will be those things which I sow. Where there is no labor, there will be no reaping.

But for now, I can only hope when I’m no longer noticing…I’ll start to notice.

Thankful

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I recall standing before the ornamental fruit trees at Lowe's in the classic cliched agony of indecision just a few months ago. Which would it be--the crabapple or the cherry? It was going to be one or the other; I had made up my mind that the patio required a vertical element to be truly complete. I was not leaving without a tree and a pot.

The kids were getting restless, monkeying around on the wooden risers that the trees were displayed upon and offering their opinions. I tuned them out, standing silently before the trees, arms crossed over my chest as I did a mental eenie-meenie-miney-moe and waited for the answer to hit me. There was something about that crabapple...something that appealed and yet repelled all at once. The cherry was scrawny and feeble looking, with spotty leaves. It tugged at me, though.

I picked up the cherry and plunked it in the cart.

Months later, as I stand outside on the patio and marvel at this whacked out Virginia weather, I have to smile at my cherry. Virginia hits us with seventy degree Mondays, thirty-four degree Monday nights, and Tuesdays that are in the forties and spitting indignant rain. Wednesday heralds a stalled out Hurricane Ida and the return of sixty and seventy degree temperatures, albeit accompanied by gusty winds and rain. My poor cherry tree can't quite wrap her seasonally-challenged mind around it all, apparently thinks it's spring, and has burst into beautiful pink bloom.

Which is fine, as long as she blooms again, when she's supposed to. I feel a little sorry for her...this eager little Charlie Brown tree singing salutations to Spring and headed straight for a smackdown with Winter.

But believe it or not, that's not totally my point. I've gotten a little off track. It occurred to me today, as I was admiring these beautiful pink cherry blossoms, why the crabapple tree just wouldn't work. Why it repulsed even as it twisted the gut with a strange sense of familiarity and comfort.

When I was little, my brothers and I used to spend time at "the Farm," the place where my dad and his brother, Harvey had grown up--a wonderland of crops, cows, properly stinky pigs, strawberries to pick warm from the sun, sleepy kittens to hunt in the hayloft, tractor rides smelling of diesel...it was paradise, setting sparks to my imagination along with the occasional stubbed toe and skinned knee.

There was a twisty, gnarled old crabapple tree near the back-door to the farmhouse, right above the well. I used to climb on the cement-covered top of the well and pretend it was my throne, or stage, or castle wall. My older brother, Chris, would climb the crabapple tree. It was the perfect height for climbing. Crabapples don't grow too big, and their limbs are just right for a child's hands to grip. He was climbing that day, while I was playing just below on the well.

My recollection of the ensuing events is somewhat fragmented; it begins slowly and then gathers speed and momentum until everything blurs together into the muzzy blink of a dream sequence--sort of like the gaining lurch of a locomotive's wheels as they barrel toward you down the track. There's a sense of inevitability, but that train seems so ponderous as it begins its journey.

I remember Harvey coming out of the house and pausing on his way to some errand in the barn. "Boy, get down from there and stop playing around..." He stopped, perhaps wondering why Chris didn't respond to him. I remember looking up into the limbs of the crabapple, and seeing him dangling upside down amidst the tight little green apples that were bitter to the taste, pinkish blood bubbling from his nose. I remember a sort of slow-motion tumble out of the tree, halted as he was pulled into the waiting and panicked arms of his uncle.

He'd been electrocuted.

Grabbed for a branch and grabbed a power line instead. Every place that his body had touched a branch or leaf was seared, with the current exiting through his foot. He was lucky, though--he escaped relatively intact, bearing a silvery map of scars, a few skin grafts, and a couple of webbed toes as the remnants of his ordeal.

My cherry tree doesn't seem so pathetic suddenly, bursting into song as it is. As I ponder the subconscious reason behind my choice, its November blossoms take on a different character. One of thanksgiving.

Changing up

Pin It This post brings to mind a recent discussion I had with my class about the horrible outcome of gossip and rumors; we talked about the atrocious things which can happen to a person when things are said about them which may—or may not—be true.

This is post to set the record straight before anyone jumps to conclusions, and finds themselves lanquishing in the mud, anxiously awaiting to sling it and share among their friends and acquaintances.

As you probably have noticed, we have a new Perspective listed on our sidebar: Lori. Now, undoubtedly some of you are wondering, Hey, what happened to Val? and now thoughts are probably already cavaljulating about your head as you drum up all the possible explanations of why she’s been replaced.

To surmise: with the advent of this thing called life, and all that it brings in its mysterious tow, Val came to the conclusion that weekly posts were just a bit too much for her at her particular stage of living; however, rest assured that Val will be returning occasionally in the vein of guest posts.

Whew, rumor squad situation averted.

This post is also for the purpose of giving a warm welcome to Lori, the newest addition to our little blogging family. While I could go all out and tell you everything there is to know about her, it would just be easier to let you head over to her bio on the 'About' page.

And yes, we’re all still friends.

P.S. I made up the words lanquishing & cavaljulating—just thought you’d all want to know.