"These are a few of my favorite things ..."

 

While a life well-lived is full of favorite memories, the most valued memories may not be included in that list of favourites. It is only through reflection and appreciation for life’s wonderful lessons that those memories become both treasured and valuable. They often include incidents that were learned at the feet of one’s parents.

The singularly most valuable lesson that I passed on to my children consisted of only one word: respect. Respect everyone and everything around you and you will be a good steward of compassion, social justice, equality and even of the environment.

That one word was an encapsulation of a lesson I learned, early, from my own parents. Regardless of how tough your own situation may be, there are others around us who are far less fortunate. If we have more of anything – material to intellectual – than others, it is our duty to share and consider their needs, even above our own. In other words, we must respect the world around us and pay the duty of care that we owe to others.

That lesson was hammered home almost daily by my mother but, in any event, on a routine basis. Yet, one incident that occurred while I was only six years old encapsulated that lifelong moral dictum.

Everyone will cite stories of how poor they were growing up and I am no exception. However, while we lacked money, we had a wealth of some of the most valuable assets: moral lessons, demands that we use our intellect to the capacity that was given to us, live by the golden rule, always place others’ needs ahead of your own wants. These are treasures to this day.

Christmas time was a time of suffering for my parents as they struggled to trim a few dollars from everyday living expenses to set aside for a few meagre gifts for the four of their children. Some years, there was less than fifty dollars for gifts and the Christmas meal, yet my mother always succeeded at making Christmas special.

She would labour until three o’clock, each morning, preparing for the one day that she dreaded.

November, 1958 provided a harsh lesson for me, yet is now the most important memory that I hold from my entire life.

I could not sleep one evening and rose, wandering into the kitchen, where my mother was working at her sewing machine. To one side, there were sections of a cowboy costume, cut from old flour sack material. Some pieces already had been dyed. At the head of the trundle sewer was an Indian headdress. This clearly was the beginnings of a Christmas gift.

My mother was a harsh-speaking woman who rarely smiled and never complimented, yet she laboured, without stop, to provide for her kids. She loved, but could never say so.

I, at only six, was learning the same lesson. I alerted her to my presence by demanding to know what she was sewing.

She startled, then used her normal brusque manner to deflect and defend. “It’s stuff for someone else. Get the hell back to bed.”

Clearly, she was lying.

“How could you let me see our Christmas gifts? Now Christmas is ruined!” I was devastated that she would be so callous as to leave these, our only gifts, out in the open and, as a result, ruin December 25 for my younger brother and myself.

“I said, it’s not for you. Now get the hell back in bed before I tan your ass.”

She could never be accused of being diplomatic or gentle.

I spent the next month despondent over our ruined Christmas morning but, because I did not want to suffer alone, I confided in my younger brother what I had seen. Now, we could share our misery.

Christmas day arrived. It was with trepidation and despair that we opened our cowboy and Indian costumes. Except, they were not in our wrapped gifts. Indeed, whatever constituted our gifts that day has slipped, long ago, from my memory. I only remember that I was heartbroken that we did not have the two costumes.

“I told you that they were not yours. Your cousins, Rocky and Patty, needed to know that someone out there cared about them. They need far more than we do.”

It was true. My cousins also lived in the depths of poverty. Yet, with them living three provinces away and my brother and I having never met them, they really had no relevance to us.

That Christmas slowly faded from memory, but the lesson never did. My parents were right. There were always others in greater need than we were. And, it was true that we should always place others and their needs ahead of our own petty concerns. We are tools, here to be a part of a greater, more valuable world.

Years later, I met my cousins. Now teenagers, they recalled receiving their own treasures that Christmas. Mom had been correct. Those gifts told them that someone else in the world cared about them, too. That lesson, like my lesson, has stuck with them throughout their lives.

Was that November experience my favorite? Not for a few years, but, since my teens, I have built my life around the precept that others matter, ahead of me. It has made me who I am. While it has cost me, occasionally, in terms of mental comfort and physical wellbeing, I hold tightly to the memory and credit it with making me into a man with whom I can be at peace, as I close in on my final years of my life.