The Imaginary Front Porch

It was much earlier than usual on a recent Saturday morning that I was eating breakfast..darkness and quiet still surrounding the neighborhood. Enjoying a leisurely cup of coffee, I picked up my sister’s most recent letter. Yes, most weeks, she and I pen multiple page letters to each other. I do love email but I treasure the art of handwritten correspondence…an art that is disappearing.

The story: a woman at their church had kindly baked an apple pie for my mother and sister, having heard that my mother always loved to bake pies. My mom, until the last couple of years, was a master pie maker…apple pie being the most common, but blueberry, mince, rhubarb, pumpkin…ah, I can taste them now…and always the left-over crust crisply baked with cinnamon and sugar sprinkled on it. Her crusts were so delicate, rolled out to just the right thinness. Our family came to believe that thin crusts are the ultimate pie crust (isn’t it true how strongly our opinions develop as a result of family experiences!).

The gift pie had a thick, crumbly crust, apples hidden somewhere in all of the delicious, buttery, calorie filled homemade “favorite” crust of another person’s style. It did not taste right to my mother; it was not a thin crust and it wasn’t her own.

Thus, the comment by her that had me laughing so hard on that dark, still morning, but also my love for her rising as the sun in my soul: “I need to look in an etiquette book to see how to send a thank you note for a pie that is not edible.” I can just see the sparkle in her eye, but more touchingly, I know that saying thank you is something she never misses doing and she wants to do it well and right. At 99, it is still a habit and it is the proper thing to do, even though it sometimes takes two or three days to compose the note. I am sure in the finished thank you that “not edible” was left out!

What struck me in those early morning moments was the contrast between her habits of thoughtfulness, graciousness, consideration for others, and always saying thank you, which have been modeled for me all my life, with the number of books and articles written in very recent years about “civility” and our need to find our way back to it. How have we gotten to a place where we need to encourage random acts of kindness, or post road signs that say, “Beware of aggressive drivers,” and all of the other symptoms of a culture that has become lax in the habits of regard and consideration?

Two things: I am so taken each morning as I greet students at Trinity carpool with how most say thank you to those who open their car doors, say thank you to their parents for driving them to school, and the many who climb out of the car saying, “I love you” to a parent, often in response to the parent’s same words. May we do all that we can to preserve those habits that make such a positive difference.

Secondly, how do we continue to inoculate our children against the habits that sometimes seem to swirl around us of neglected thanks, not reaching out to help another, lack of consideration, and forgetting the basic qualities of civility of which we all want to be the recipients?

We’ll never do it perfectly; however, I know that in those early morning moments I was reminded that I can follow more intentionally in the footsteps of my mother and father and do it better…such as finding the right and gracious thank you wording even when some things in life are “inedible.”

On Halloween Eve I was, as usual, madly finishing my costume.  Stores were completely emptied of Halloween jewelry so it was on to the local craft store. At about 9 PM I was sitting at the table in my study with hundreds of little beads of all colors spread out before me, the elastic to string them off to the side.  The goal was black, orange, silver and gold beaded bracelets and earrings.  Sorting, it was easy to ignore the blue and green beads. The rose beads were trickier. I tried so carefully to sift them out. In their tiny size and shine they looked too close to the orange beads…not acceptable for a Halloween bracelet.  Four bracelets and two earrings later the mission was accomplished. I even double-checked.

Halloween dawned a glorious day, filled with all the fun of pretending to be someone else for a brief time, watching children proudly parade, and relishing the creativity and joy in the frivolity that too often get buried underneath the routines.  That is for another writing.

Driving home, arm resting on the open car window, the sun brought out the sparkle of the beads.  All of a sudden I noticed it…that one rose colored bead, gleaming at me.  My first instinct was disappointment with myself for not having caught it the night before and for the rose bead tainting the Halloween theme.  It was my “everything has to be perfectly so” voice and annoyance that I had missed the mark. It wasn’t perfectly so.  Had anyone noticed that one little rose bead that didn’t fit? 

That “perfectly so” voice rises up all the time and it both is and isn’t me. It is me because it is an ingrained product of my own schooling and the questions, “Did I do it right? Will this bracelet get an A?”  There is nothing wrong with wanting to do things well, even wanting to do them perfectly once in a while. But my truth is that A’s were few and far between and ultimately I have come to realize that for me they were not necessarily the right criteria.  What I truly love is ”quirky,” “different,” “unique,” and even “imperfect” and I know in my heart that many of my teachers missed hearing what I thought because it didn’t fit the “right answer.”

The more I looked at the bracelet and thought about it, the more the other real me came out. I loved that little rose bead making it different than the usual Halloween jewelry. It gave the bracelet its own mark and a unique sparkle.  Next year I might even be sure to put something non-traditional in on purpose.

It made me think about the children I am with each day and the little rose bead that each one most likely has, discovered  and sparkling, or perhaps still unnoticed. I want to be absolutely certain (yes, in this I want to be “perfectly so”) that children whose lives I touch know their rose bead is just fine. It is better than fine.  It gives them a beautiful, unique design.  And who is to say there can’t be two or three?