Generosity

Are you generous? I hope I am, but sometimes I wonder.

Recently, we celebrated the 90^th birthday of one of my good friend’s mother, Millie. From the time I was 14 years old, her house was open to me and my gang of high school friends. We had slumber parties there, and when her daughter won a turkey at our school’s annual Turkey Bingo, she cooked it for a dozen girls. When we went to the prom, she opened her home for us bleary-eyed prom goers, getting up at 4 a.m. to cook us homemade waffles after we departed the Gateway Clipper after-prom cruise. Neither I nor my friends were wealthy. We all grew up in three-bedroom, one-bath homes, sharing rooms with siblings, and no one at that time had a “family room.” But we were welcomed into all of their homes, and drinks and snacks were generously provided.

Contrast that to something that I also experienced when I was in high school. In my senior year, I was a contestant in the North Hills Junior Miss Pageant. Upon making the cut as one of 16 finalists, (I didn’t win), all the contestants were welcomed at a party in a rather hoity-toity neighborhood, in what I would have called back then a mansion. Our refreshments? They hostess passed around one small bowl of nuts and served us lemon water. They didn’t even crack open a bottle of Pepsi or pop the top on some Pringles.

 

 

It often seems that those who have a lot are the cheapest. When I was in 6^th grade, my group of friends decided to go Christmas caroling and donate any money we earned to Children’s Hospital. We went door-to-door in my girlfriends’ neighborhood, and almost every house we stopped at gave us a dollar or two and some even gave us a five-dollar bill! Adjacent to her neighborhood was a plan of newly built homes that looked to me back in 1972 to be homes like the Brady Bunch lived in. When we caroled at these new homes, person after person who opened their door to us gave us a measly quarter.

When I worked at Westinghouse back in the early 80s, someone in our department suffered a tragedy, and one of the secretaries decided to take up a collection for our co-worker. Everyone threw some money into her bag until she got to the “big boss,” who said, “Sure, I’ll contribute. Write a check from petty cash and sign my name.” The secretary replied, “No, we’re not soliciting money from the company; we want cash from just the co-workers.” Sadly, this person could not grasp that giving money from the company funds was not the same as giving a personal gift from the heart.

Stinginess is not an attractive quality, and I hope my meter falls on the side of generosity. Not all of us are St. Francis, renouncing material goods, or have a lot of extra cash to give, but like my friend’s mom, you don’t always have to give cash, you can be generous with your time, your hospitality, your talent and even with your smiles and complements.

This article originally appeared in the May issue of Northern Connection magazine. 
 

Like a Good Neighbor

 Fred Rogers would have celebrated his 95^th birthday on March 20. I wasn’t a “Mr. Rogers kid”; I grew up watching Romper Room. Mr. Rogers Neighborhood was for my younger siblings, but it was hard to escape his influence and his theme song, “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” 

 

My mother-in-law, Stella, also turned 95 on December 28, and then sadly, died two days later. During her funeral home visitation hours, coincidentally in Latrobe, also the birthplace of Mr. Rogers, many of her neighbors came to pay their respects. My mother-in-law lived in her home on two acres in Derry, outside of Latrobe. until last May when she fell. Although she was wearing one of those medical alert bracelets when she fell, she landed on her arm, and it took her several hours before she either regained consciousness or could summon the strength to push the alert button and call my sister-in-law.

As my mother-in-law lived over an hour away from my sister-in-law or us, my sister-in-law called the next-door neighbor and an ambulance. At the funeral home, we found out from the neighbor that it was she who arrived on the scene first, cleaned up my mother-in-law, changed her clothes, stayed with her, and let in the paramedics. Her neighborliness was touching, and we thanked her profusely for her kindness.

A few weeks later, I went to a relative’s bridal shower. As the bride began to open a gift, she stopped to acknowledge the gift-giver. “This is from Mrs. Perkins, our neighbor,” she said, singling out a small white-haired woman. “How old are you?” The bride asked. “Ninety-four,” the elderly woman replied. The bride, who is 35, turned and said to everyone. “Mrs. Perkins is my buddy. Poor thing, she’s heard about every boyfriend I’ve ever had from second grade on.” 

 

In her novel To Kill a Mockingbird, writer Harper Lee wrote, “You can choose your friends but you sho' can't choose your family.” For the most part, you can’t choose your neighbors either. In most instances, like a mortgage, they come with your home. 

 

                                                                               Hey, Boo!

 

We’ve all heard horror stories about the “neighbors from hell,” but neighbors often can be just as important as family. They can be first responders, confidants, babysitters, and best of all, friends. I’ve been blessed to know many wonderful neighbors and consider them not only people who live nearby but my friends.

Good neighbors are the unsung heroes of society. As I was thinking about this, I wondered if there is a day to celebrate neighbors and there is. National Neighbor Day is celebrated on September 28. I also learned that there is a National Sneak Some Zucchini Onto Your Neighbor’s Porch Day.

As spring arrives and you’re out and about in your neighborhood, take time to appreciate the good people who live around you. But a word of caution. You may want to skip that zucchini day if you want to remain friends with your neighbors.

 

This article originally appeared in the March issue of Northern Connection magazine. 

What Then?

When my twins were small, I used to belong to the Moms of Twins & Triplets Club, and at one meeting we had a child psychologist speak who gave us some good tips on how to help children behave. One particular piece of advice he imparted was to employ two little words: “if” and “then.” If you wanted to make your child comply or if they were pestering you, parents were instructed to say something like, “If you put your toys away, then we can go to the park.” Or “If you quit whining, then I will listen to you.”

Those little words worked like magic and staved off a lot of conflict. They even worked personally. Many times over the years, I’ve told myself things like, “If you go to the gym, then you can come home and read.”

 

While those words are a pair of gems, I think there are several other phrases that would be helpful to use and the first is “What then?” It seems that a week doesn’t go by without a video going viral of someone doing something ridiculously stupid or of people doing something foolish or risky. Take for instance selfies. Taking pictures of yourself with your cell phone and placing yourself in jeopardy is widespread. So much so that Wikipedia has a “List of Selfie-Related Injuries or Deaths” entry, which compiles the enormous number of people who have been harmed or died while taking their picture.

In 2014, the U.S. Department of Transportation estimated that 33,000 people alone were injured while taking a photo of themselves while driving. That doesn’t take into account those who fell off cliffs, were swept out to sea, or fell off moving trains while taking their picture. 

 

But it’s not only selfies. It seems these days very few people ask themselves, “What then?” before doing something. Life comes with risk, but when it comes to risky behavior or thinking about the results of those actions, it seems that some people ignore the possible consequences. We even see it in our elected leaders. Do they ever consider that when they release convicted inmates early on to the street, or choose to not prosecute them, that it’s not surprising that crime skyrockets.

When my youngest was in grade school, they taught him this little jingle: Pause, Reflect, Show Some Respect. Our society values and promotes action. We all know the phrases, "Just do it" or "It’s go time." Looking back on some of the mistakes I’ve made, many of them could have been avoided if I’d paused. 

Maybe we’d be better off if we encouraged people to pause, think about what we are about to do, and follow that to its likely conclusion by asking "What then?" In so doing, we’d create less trouble for ourselves and society.  

 

This article originally appeared in the February 2023 Issue of Northern Connection Magazine.