Friday, November 16, 2012

Everything Counts

There is a new trend on Facebook and I’m happy to report, it doesn’t piss me off and it’s one that I actually quite enjoy.  I’m sure you’ve noticed that during the month of November our friends have taken it upon themselves to post every day what they are most thankful for in their lives.  For example, today is the 16th of November, so upon logging onto my home page I saw a lot of posts that looked like this: “Day 16: Today I am thankful for my parents, whose love and support have always been just what I needed to succeed in life.” 

I am not cynical.  I’ve never been the type of person who hates something just because everyone else loves it.  (50 Shades of Grey being the exception.)  I know people who’ve refused to join Facebook just because everyone else is doing it, or refuse to like a certain mainstream band because of its popularity.  I think that’s beyond smug.  I mean, get over yourself.  You are not as cool as you think you are.  Because when I see these status updates from the people that I know and love systematically listing what they’re thankful for, I have to confess, I get a gooey buttery feeling inside of my heart.  I know some of the cynics are over it already and think that it’s just another jump-on-the-bandwagon maudlin display of gratitude, but I like it.  I’ll take it over your political rants and pictures of food any day of the week.  I like knowing that I’m not the only person who feels so tremendously blessed and who over-sentimentalizes the people and things others take for granted.  And yes, I realize we are supposed to be thankful every day of the year and not just during the month of November.  But let’s be honest, if that were the case, we wouldn’t need a National Holiday to remind us to be grateful.  Americans, it is called “Thanksgiving” for a reason.  It stopped being about celebrating the autumn harvest and conquering the New World years ago when we finally got politically correct and took the injustices suffered by Native Americans seriously.  Try explaining to your four year old why we celebrate Thanksgiving while leaving out the weird, un-PC details of the first pilgrim/Indian dinner (because according to every historian it didn’t happen that way) and instead try to justify this brain fart of a holiday using a Sunday school type of lesson.  I said to my son, “It’s a day set aside to tell God how thankful we are for everything.  And, our family comes together to eat dinner.”  This explanation confused him slightly, since we do that very thing practically every night.  We don’t take saying “thank you” lightly in our household.  If you’re going to be anything, be thankful.  It’s a beautiful thing. 

Not that long ago a woman complimented me on my Coach purse.  She said, “It must be nice.”  I said, “It is,” knowing fully well what she was implying.  That in today’s economy it must be nice to be so frivolous and shallow as to not only afford but have the audacity to purchase a two hundred dollar bag.  I deduced from her tone of voice that she had already made certain assumptions about my priorities.  I could’ve set her straight.  I could’ve told her that I bought the purse at an outlet mall in Branson on a trip with my husband.  And I guess I could’ve told her that he bought the purse for me because we were eating lunch at an A&W and I told him a story from my childhood that almost made him cry.  I wasn’t fishing for a purse with my story.  I wasn’t even fishing for sympathy.  (And I’m not fishing for it now, if that’s what you’re thinking.)  The story goes, when I was about eight or nine years old, my mother and sister and I went on a church trip to Elephant Rock, a park in Missouri with, you guessed it, really big rocks.  On the way back, the bus load of church goers stopped at an A&W restaurant.  Everyone got off the bus.  Everyone except my mother and sister and I.  I remember crying and begging my mother to go inside so I could have just one root beer.  I had never seen the inside of an A&W restaurant and I thought it must be some sort of kid heaven; foot long hot dogs and fountains of root beer and frosty mugs.  Even at eight years old, I understood exactly why we didn’t go inside the restaurant.  We were poor.  My mom had no money to spend on frivolous stuff like root beer floats.  When you’re a kid, you don’t see the big picture because your life is surrounded by the small things.  Toys, candy, root beer…that’s the world you live in, not understanding things like electricity, mortgage payments, gas.  I know I added more fuel to the embarrassment of my mother but at the time, I couldn’t help it.  I cried.  I cried for what seemed like forever while all the people were inside eating and drinking, and I cried all the way home after the loaded bus took off and the A&W sign got smaller and smaller.  Even at eight years old, I understood what feeling “left out” meant.  I understood what feeling “less than” meant.  I didn’t understand priorities, or pride.  But my mother did.  Because I imagine that out of an entire bus load of Christians that someone probably volunteered to pay for our sodas.  But my mom understood what was important, and though at the time I felt like the victim of this story, I know it’s really my mom who wouldn’t take up the offer, she who suffered more than I ever had. 

Don’t misunderstand my story.  I’m not trying to glamorize being poor.  I’m not saying that it’s given me any more depth of character or entitlement than someone who was raised privileged or even middle class.  While I was growing up I would’ve given anything to be just like my friends.  You know exactly what I’m talking about.  Because I don’t care who you are or what your economical background is; you have a “thing.”  A thing that at some point in your life has made you feel “less than” or “left out.”  Maybe your parents gave you everything you wanted when you were a kid but never paid any attention to you.  Or maybe you’ve been beautiful your whole life but never felt valued for anything else.  Or maybe you have a disability, or a birth defect, or a social disorder, or have been the victim of something awful.  Heck, I could go on and on but you get what I’m saying.  Trust me, I know a ton of people who’ve had it much worse than I have. In fact, I am friends with some of those people on Facebook and they’ve decided that this month, as cheesy as it might seem, they are going to focus on what it is they are thankful for and not what they’re sad about.  Like I said, it’s a beautiful thing.

The lady who judged me so quickly for having a pricey bag didn’t know that just a few days ago as I was driving home from a play date I thanked God that I was able to take my son to Panera Bread Company afterwards with all the mommies and their kids.  It may seem like a small thing, based on who you are, but to me, it means something.  You know why now.  I’m thankful for the big things and the small things, and everything in between.  This girl knows the value of a Coach purse and the value of a root beer.  More importantly, I know the value of a good mother, for whom I'd do anything and give everything, who didn’t have the choices that I do now.  I don’t take those choices for granted.  I don’t feel like that little girl on the bus, I am that little girl on the bus.  Only now I can afford to go inside. 

So, yeah, I’m thankful…

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