I am profoundly moved by word usage. I collect words. Words are what remain of a person's legacy, those letters scripted out of how they viewed the world and how they lived it. I'm also frequently considering the legacy a person leaves behind and the legacy I hope continues through me. For most, the word legacy denotes some kind of brave act or heroism from the era before. My love for history is steeped in this idea of legacy. What has always appealed to me most is the tidbits that have trickled down of the most mundane things, the kindnesses. History is full of the terrible, the tragedies, the horrors, the overwhelming loss of control for so many people pushed and pulled along in a stream of events that make up TIME, but in those moments, there are the kindnesses. The base knowledge that one word, one small act, can forever change another person's life. There's a myriad of word collections that swirl through my mind: Fred Rogers saying "Look for the workers..." and Roald Dahl saying that he puts kindness "before any of the things like courage or bravery or generosity... it covers everything." Grand gestures are not required to show someone you care, that you acknowledge their existence, their triumph, or their struggles. And for that extra dollop of magic, those kind actions do not require anyone to have walked the same paths, to have the same religious beliefs, or the same political platforms.
To say that 2020 has been disproportionately unkind is a universal agreement-- the one thing any one of us can whole heartedly get behind. It's been the worst... the events, the decisions, the lack of decisions, the people (oh, the people). It's an exceptionally difficult to pill to swallow to see humankind at each others' throats for any and every slight. The ever changing daily responses from the visceral to the unconcerned have been a roller coaster we were never prepared to ride. I have struggled and grieved over the lack of care for human beings. At its most base (and I hate to use that term because it seems flippant to attribute that word to our simple form) we were created in the image of God. That should be our starting point. That's all we need to know. That's all we need to recognize to be kind.
Today marks the 82nd birthday of my wonderful Grandma. In June a few of us descended upon our grandparents' house at my Papa's request to help clean things to help them be able to move around easier. After sixty four years of marriage, and most of those lived in the same house, the memories were piled up. Laughing is a hereditary condition, I come by it quite honestly, and we giggled and guffawed over our findings as we dug deep. We also wept as enthusiastically as we were humored as memories of us as young grandchildren came back. I always felt my Grandma was a young soul, and for all my love of history and legacy, I never quite realized until this year, that I made her a grandmother for a second time shortly after her 42nd birthday. From where I'm sitting just shy of forty, she was young. It's a rarity for many to have a set of grandparents still doing life. They are slowing down-- at least Grandma is, because at 84, I don't think my Papa has ever known what it means to be leisurely and not working. The family understanding of what it means to do all the things, to work with our hands, to figure things out, to work hard and do our duty definitely is straight from our Papa. Together they have a packaged legacy.
The greatest tradition that I have longed for with such intensity the last few months has been their simple examples of love and kindness. Grandma is a firecracker. My Caelan is often compared to a young Nancy Payne and all her antics. Grandma will tell you how it is. Grandma will tell you what she thinks, no holds bar, and with a bluntness bordering on the brutal. But she will love you regardless of what you choose to do... the good decisions, the bad decisions, whether it's what she thinks you should or shouldn't do, and the consequences whether rewarding or heartbreaking. For her, at the end of the day, you need to be fed and clothed, and if you need a roof, they have one. More people call my grandparents Grandma and Papa than they are blood related to. In June, my sweet Grandma, ailing in ways that make her sometimes childlike and innocent, commented on the current times "Well, I just don't understand it. We are supposed to love everybody and we wouldn't have these problems." This echoes back to all the times I heard her throughout my life say "Well, that's just life." My favorite is hearing her say "It's a wonderful life and we have fun." Even when it's not. Sometimes she sings it. A lot of her sayings are sung. Just little bits of legacy. They don't seem to add up to much in the grand scheme of LEGACY, but those tiny bits are everything to my life.
My grandparents' lives have not been easy. Children of the Depression, growing up in North Texas, married before they were both twenty, and then four children right after another, while Papa kept pushing forward with his education before finally becoming a junior high science teacher and coach. They both worked in education, with side businesses of hauling water to country folk, farming, and butchering. Forty acres of land that held the family, the livestock, the wheat fields, the many different years of plantings from potatoes to pinto beans, the hay season, the hot summer harvests, the mesquite trees, the stories... oh, the stories. The grandkids, the aunts, the uncles, the cousins... all the strangers, near strangers, church people, the runaways, the airmen from the nearby AFB, and family they had gathered around their table at holidays or any days. Fulfilling simple needs, stretching out across any divide to care for those they knew needed love even if those people went on their way and never returned. Even in recent years they were "just taking some old people to church" or "it's our day of the week to deliver Meals on Wheels" or "It's my day to sew at the hospital." To which I always thought "But you're the old people." But this is how life is supposed to be done and the realization of the last few months that people just don't do life like this any more has been a blow. If anything, we are nowhere near how my grandparents have loved and shown kindness. My heart can hardly think of the time in the near future where they are not in it, because we know it's coming. We need these people so desperately. We need this legacy. These people that have lived for eighty plus years doing hard work, doing the simple work, and taking care of people simply because people were made by God.
