Sunday, November 25, 2012

Memories for Today; A Shaker Story

I want to tell you guys a story about my hometown. It's one of those places that became the beacon of diversity in Ohio. Race-sensitive groups popping up left and right and parties that are a diverse as a handful of trail mix. Shaker was a traditional public school with the best teachers, participatory parents, and students that dream and succeed each year.
It's a community that creates friends based off of interests and friendships that feel like family.
Although it's a great town some alumni leave, but others stay and start their own families in the place that they grew up. And without fail, each Wednesday before Thanksgiving former Shaker students gather together at the neighborhood watering hole to exchange old stories and make promises on meeting up in their new cities they call home.
Each year, this is pretty true -- until this year.
This year a different reunion happened just three days before the "typical one" - it was a service held in memory of one of our classmates who passed away just a week before Thanksgiving.
Since I was home for the holiday the weekend before, I also was able to attend the services where our friend Brian was laid to rest. Brian was a friend with EVERYONE -- you could tell by the smorgasbord of people that congregated at the synagogue on a crisp Sunday afternoon. Even as we were driving to the service we were trying to think of anyone that ever had a issue with him - he really was a friend to all and a happy reminder of what carefree and positivity can look like in a person. So we gathered to say goodbye on Sunday and likely to see each other again in a few days.
As anticipated this year's reunion Wednesday-pre-Thanksgiving story was different - hugs were longer, old friends declare to turn over a new leaf because for once in the town we all called home, we found our Shaker memories have an expiration date.
It was more than being happy to see people, although that might be, it made me appreciate this jumbled combination of memories and friends and connections we spent 18 years making. It made me understand how the loss of one can have this domino effect 600 miles away. But it also made me notice that the tears of sadness were also mourning the loss of innocence in Shaker.  When we would all sit around talking about things we did in high school (driving the oval, pajama parties, mocking teachers, counting how many times "Be the Best" came up in our years) that reminiscing gave us a feeling of presence. A memory is no more than a tickle of history in a present day that gives you hope that you'll make more memories tomorrow. I don't need to tell you why this Thanksgiving changed that idea, but what I will say is that this Thanksgiving gave me a new way to look at being grateful and it made me promise to make memories for today and not wait for tomorrow to remember.

Monday, November 5, 2012

Brother can you spare a dime for your thoughts?

Do you ever feel bad about something, like something you said that hurt someone or did something that's slightly embarrassing, but everyone just shrugs it off for the sake of your feelings? The whole "don't worry about it." or "I've done that before, happens all the time..." But, you know they are just embarrassed for you and don't want you to feel worse. So you replay this embarrassment over and over in your head and even sometimes when you aren't thinking about it, it'll sneak up on you and you start thinking about it again. This happens to me all the time.
I think I have this thing that can sense idleness in my thoughts and then one of those pitiful moments pops up, like "hey, remember me? Whatever you do don't do that again..."
So, why am I telling you this? Because I saw it happen to someone else today. For once it wasn't me!
I volunteered at a homeless banquet to help hand out food to the annual Thanksgiving feast that my church throws. Spending the extra hour from daylight savings on a run today, I showed up a little after the groups were divided and I was lumped into the team that serves the food. I was partnered with someone who would carry the tray as I handed out the plates. I haven't volunteered for something like this since girl scouts when we volunteered at an elderly home -- there a senile old lady showed me her boobs.
Anyway, our pastor asked that we be kind to these people that were coming in as they were mostly lonely and enjoyed talking to people. So, being friendly (hoping to avoid any indecent exposure) I was handing out meals to my section, a man calls me over reads my nametag and says, "Danielle, how are you?" I reply ask him how he's doing and then he asks me "what do you do?" I answer him and come up short of what to say next so I ramble off I need to deliver more plates and he can let me know if he needs anything else.
Later I hear him ask the same question to someone else "what do you do?" And the girl replies with her occupation and then asks him what he does for a living...Now, before I tell you his response, I'm thinking "why did she ask that, isn't that rude?"

Sure enough, he says "girl, if I made a living would I be here getting food from you?"
There it was - what I was afraid of - she gave an instinctual response for a conversation starter, but it backfired and now she had egg on her face.
So, if she's anything like me I know she'll replay this in her head and think, "Why did I say that?" Or she'll think, "why did he ask me that!??!"
Because I wondered the same thing, not only that, but it made me feel shameful, which is the LAST thing I wanted to get out of doing this. As a volunteer I didn't feel a need to divulge whom I was outside of that space, I was here to help that was my job for the day. My real job was a divider in the room, which I wanted to leave at the door so I could help these people get a meal today, a simple task we all need, but unfortunately not widely available. So when this man introduced work into the space and ultimately economic stature it made me feel awkwardly different than him. Maybe I'm naive to think this, but for a short while when I was handing out meals in that space we were all one community. I guess that was the point of this experience, huh?
But then as I was leaving I started to think again what if the goal of that question wasn't to make anyone feel any type of way, but to remind us that we have certain blessings that we check at the door when we enter into these spaces to help create an equalizer, but it's those same blessings that allow us to create hope for the people in the room. Just something to keep in mind, when you're in your next situation and asked "brother can you spare a dime."

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