My mother was a kind and generous woman. She was extremely generous with her time, participating in her community, volunteering, working with support groups, and making friends everywhere she went. She was the sort of person you could share your deepest feelings with and know she would respect your vulnerability and protect your secrets. She was comfortable anywhere and with any sort of person. She wasn't condescending towards those who were less clever, or less fortunate than she was. She was just... genuine with them. This post isn't really about her, though. This is about how, through her, I learned an important lesson about perspective.
Mom and Dad lived in Vermont for a while in the mid-90s, and like she always did, Mom made friends with long-term residents of a motel Dad and her were managing. One of her friends, I'll call Dee (not her real name), isn't the most intelligent woman in the world. I'd be surprised if she tested at average mental ability. She'd always worked at menial jobs in kitchens or laundries. She was working as a housekeeper at the motel, and also living in an upstairs room with her common law husband, who cut firewood for a living.
I've always thought of Dee as a simple woman. Simple as in uncomplicated. Her life isn't cluttered with concerns about much outside of her small life. Her children live in different places, and she's traveled to visit them, but the travel didn't seem to make much of change in the smallness of her world. Travel was necessary to see her children, but once there, she was just as isolated, and content to remain that way. Truthfully, I've felt a bit protective of her in a distant way, and a bit condescending towards her. We don't have a lot in common aside from a shared love for Mom.
I still see her three or four times a year, and have done since my parents moved to Florida around 1997 or so. She lives in the town where I work, and walks to my office occasionally to check in with me and reminisce about Mom and her now-deceased husband. I always greet her warmly, and stop whatever I'm doing, admittedly more because I know Mom would want me to and I'm trying to be kind, than because I'm all that interested in the ensuing conversation, which revolves around people I have never met mentioned as if I shared regular holiday dinners with them.
Dee's life has been difficult. She suffered an injury at work many years ago that left her suffering from chronic back pain. She's on disability, lives in a shabby apartment with rent subsidies and fuel subsidies, and gets by on Medicaid (she's not old enough to qualify for Medicare or Social Security, not that she ever paid enough into SS to get much of an annuity once she's old enough). She doesn't really get adequate health care. Her husband left her nothing. She collects bottles and cans to supplement her meager income, and sometimes splurges on playing bingo in the hope of getting a bit more cash. She has a cell phone that she got as a hand-me-down from one of her sons, but it doesn't work very well. Still, she's glad to have it. Her attitude always remains upbeat. She doesn't really complain much, or at least her complaints are mildly stated and rarely the focus of her conversations. Mostly she talks about how her kids are doing, about her grandchildren, and how she wished she could see them more than she's been able (she can't drive and can't really afford to travel unless one of her children pays). She talks amiably about things she hears at bingo, or how people in her circle are doing. She talks about Mom and how much she misses her, and how much she misses her husband. She invariably talks about some meal or other Mom cooked for her, and how she never could get the same great food out of her own stove.
During one such conversation with her recently, she was talking about how she's diabetic now, and the doctor wants her eating more protein and less carbs. I'd offered her some suggestions (as I'd been down that road before), and asked her about what she could buy. She mentioned being able to get this or that thing at the grocery store for some nice price because it was on sale or whatever.
I asked "Have you found much at the food shelf? Or is it mostly carby stuff there?"
Her response was "I don't usually go there, I don't want to take food away from people who really need it."
This was spoken very matter of factly. The conversation flowed on around, but this simple statement stuck in my head. I've been thinking about it off and on for months now and it never fails to give me pause, and flummox me. My initial reaction was absolute astonishment that she doesn't think the food shelf is for her. But this gives way to my really examining my assumptions. When I give to the Food Bank, it is because of the people like Dee in my life. The people I see who are struggling so hard just to survive every day. People who are one or two missed checks from being on the street or having to sleep on someone's pull out sofa.
It never occurred to me that she might not see herself and her situation in this light at all. I remember her mentioning giving away her gloves to a woman she knew who "really needed them". Then myriad other little sprinklings of generosity that Dee has mentioned to me over the years, and I realize, she actually sees herself as very fortunate. All around her, she knows people who have it even harder than she does. She has a roof over her head, adequate food, the chance to see a doctor when she's sick and some basic chronic health care, enough clothes, chances to see people she likes, and opportunities for playing bingo. She'd like to have a computer so she could play solitaire on it, but she's not sure she'd be interested in access to the internet.
Who am I to pity her? To feel sorry for her, or wish she "had it better"?
My world is much larger than hers. I travel internationally for pleasure, and to be exposed to other people and cultures. I read world-wide news, and rage at the inhumanity I hear about in the world around me. I know how much I have, compared to how little she has. I wish for her the same pleasures I know in playing with my dog and cats, on my land, snuggling my husband, or having friends over to a large holiday meal that I've prepared in my fancy, extravagant kitchen in the house that my husband designed and made possible through careful financial management. I wish the same joys for everyone I know and love or care about. They seem simple to me. Almost rustic in a lot of ways. I'm not, afterall, a jet-setter. I prefer being at home most of the time. I like knitting by my woodstove that is burning wood my husband harvested from our land. And yet...
I am humbled by her simple generosity. Her unpretentious acceptance of how well off she is. Her belief that there are people worse off than her, and what's more, her ingrained attitude that it is part of her responsibility in this life to help those people. Her heart is so very big. Her love for the people around her just shines through everything she does. I finally see what my mother loved so much about her.
I am still processing the implications and realizations about who I am and what I think is important that come from this, but one thing I know for sure is that Dee's attitudes humble and challenge me. She twists my perspectives around without even realizing it. I re-learn this lesson every so often, but it bears re-learning:
My perception of things is not the only one, and it is not necessarily the "right" one.
