Tag Archives: pride

Feb21

Three Things Thursday 4 — Sixth Graders, Chemistry and Sharing

Posted on February 21, 2013 by Grass Oil by Molly Field

This is my weekly series about enriching our Mind, Body and Soul; or a recap of what has happened to me which enriched mine; or a chat about products I like which enrich those essential elements to our wellbeing.

Mind: Serendipity cloaked as a missing sixth-grade classroom science project directive

Yesterday my middle son, Thing 2, needed me to bring in ingredients to make bread. His class was running a science experiment, “The Chemistry behind Baking Bread.”

The night before, he said, “Oh, I just need a couple things.”

“What things?” I asked.

“A bowl. Or some yeast. Maybe a wash cloth. Just that.”

“One of each only, all of them? So one loaf or is everyone making their own bread?”

“Yeah. Whatever you have.”

“Honey, I saw a paper about bread baking, but I haven’t seen it lately. Is this about that paper? Do you know where it is?”

“No. I just need a bowl.”

I let it go. This is how he can be sometimes. It’s not shame or indifference, it’s something else. Oh yeah: puberty.

Yesterday morning, he called me from school. “Mom, can you bring in that stuff for the bread? Or … I just need a bowl.”

“Hon, where is the sheet? You must need more than a bowl.”

“It’s in the playroom.”

This is our playroom:

I didn’t find it. But I did in another room and here it is:

Just as it should be.

So because I’m off Facebook for Lent (except to share this post with the parents of the class because I set up an FB group for them), I had time to kill. I gathered all the stuff, brought it to him at school and ended up staying to help out. I am so glad I did. Those kids are so cool.

I opened bags of flour, gave everyone a tablespoon of salt, helped mix the dough, touched shortening (uch! I can’t believe that stuff exists) and everyone had a great time.

Here are just some of the kids in one of the several classrooms kneading and mixing. They made enough bread for each of them to take home two loaves, one for each teacher and one for the charity.

These teachers scheduled the day to the minute. When we were finished kneading, it was time for lunch. T2 invited me to join him, he’d “buy” me lunch using his card, but I demurred. I wanted to clean the dough out of my hair and off my clothes and blow the flour out of my nose.

Before I left, I asked the teachers if they needed anything else. They did: they asked me to deliver the bread to the food bank mentioned in the crumpled directive above. I was happy to do so, “but the shelter has specific hours, so you need to check out the website…” Ok. The delivery was going to have to wait until today.

There has been a tugging in my heart to be more helpful to our community and I leapt at the chance to have a “good reason” for getting involved. (As if simply breathing and being of sound mind and physically capable isn’t enough.)

Body: Chemistry as Whole Wheat Bread

This is the bounty of bread the kids made. Each kiddo used probably an entire roll of aluminum foil to wrap their loaves. We brought about 40 loaves.

It’s a lot of work to make bread and many of the kids were talking about the arduous nature of the stirring and the kneading amongst the many inquiries of whether it was “time yet?” to bake it. All of them came away from the experience of wanting to do it again.

When I entered the school later on to fetch the bread, the front hallway smelled so good. It reminded me of the Italian bakery near my childhood home in Buffalo, NY; that smell can mean only one thing: healthy delicious food.

Soul: Sharing the Bread with the Homeless

My youngest son is sick today. Shocker, I know. He has the sniffles, but I couldn’t not make the delivery. I promised the teachers as well as my Spirit it would happen. So I warmed up the car (it’s 28˚ and windy today), wrapped Thing 3 in a blanket, strapped him into his seat and invited Murphy to come along so he could keep T3 company while T2 and I dropped off the bread.

As long as he left the bread alone, he’d live to see another day. He worked very hard and he didn’t touch it.

I had every intention of bringing T2 inside the shelter with me. I didn’t want to beat him over the head with the concept that he’s living an extremely fortunate life. That homelessness doesn’t always look like haggard and scary people wrapped in plastic bags sleeping on grates outside the White House. That homelessness and poverty and dysfunction look like you and me. It is clean, shaven, wearing a fresh shirt and a sometimes ready but weary and worried smile.

When we pulled up, I had to wrestle Murphy out of the way for the box of bread. T2 almost collapsed under its weight while I clicked on the key fob to lock my child and dog in the car for a few minutes. I had my trepidation: a child locked in a car outside a homeless shelter. But I believed in the Good that would overcome the Fear. I was doing the right thing. He was sick and T2 really needed to see where this bread was going. He needed his eyes opened. And I didn’t know it, but I needed my heart softened too.

When we opened the door to go in, it was plastered with flyers about masses, prayer times, AA and NA meetings, mental health counseling, shower availability and donation needs. I was humbled immediately. T2 is too young to understand the insidious domino effect that a bad step can have on the downtrodden.

We were greeted with smiles and gratitude and a plea to tour the place. I explained I had a child in the car, but the female minister won me over with her warmth and reassurances. I also wanted T2 to see what was going on in there. The entire place is the size of a 7-11 or a dry cleaner store. The room was almost packed; I would guess there were about 45 people in the public room and maybe 10 in offices or in counseling.

As I explained in a note to my best friend today,

that homeless center… DUDE. it’s the place. i think i’ve found our charity. they do a lot there. i don’t think T2 has been spiritually altered, but it had an impact. they have a room the size of your office for a chapel with post-card-size pictures of the stations of the cross on the walls, an assortment of odd chairs for people to sit on and pray; a gorgeous mahogany cross donated by a man who also used the same wood to make some tables for the center because that’s what they do: God is in the tables. they are nondenominational, but clearly Christian oriented without any head-bashing with a bible. they have a laundry center where you can bring one load a day and they will wash it for the homeless; they have storage room filled with paper plates, napkins, fritos and chips and coffee and powdered creamer. i said i had some blankets and she said she didn’t need them anymore because hypothermia was almost over… i loved how she was very frank but kind about it all in front of T2. she said, “because hypothermia is ending soon, the people can go back to the woods and [get this]: they bring back the blankets for someone else…” the homeless have a sense of charity. they have computers for people to look for work (i was thinking we should get our Dell up to snuff and give it to them…) when someone applies for a job, a special line rings and they don’t answer “homeless shelter” they just say, “hello…” so the pride thing, as you know, is very important. they had free mental health counseling. the director’s office looked like our offices… papers everywhere… there were a couple women there, mostly men, but they looked so sad. a very elderly man was giving a younger man a haircut. there were young men, early 20s there, offered to help me with the bread; a larger middle-aged man was reading a book to a table full of people who were listening; it wasn’t a bible, it was probably a self-help book or heck, maybe even a story… i was blown away; my heart sang and melted at the same time.

i have a pamphlet for you. wow. i am going to write about this. i can’t help myself. heck, i’ll probably just copy and edit what i shared with you.

we are so lucky… i know you know this.

xoxoxoxo

When we got back into the car, I asked T2 what he thought; if he’d learned anything, if he had any feelings. He said, “Yeah. I am lucky. There are a lot of sad people in there who have nothing. We should give them an iPad and some of our chips we don’t like and maybe a book or two. I don’t think they’d like any Legos…” I think he’s getting it… We will go back with all the kids to teach them to help their fellow man. I will honor the vibe I picked up from a couple people in there, I’ll never leave my child out of my sight when we work there, but this will be good.

So that’s what we did before 10am today.

So… yeah.

Click on the red link for last week’s Three Things Thursday.

Thank you.

Feb19

Tuesday Morning Press 18 — Achievement Vs. Recognition

Posted on February 19, 2013 by Grass Oil by Molly Field

Standard

One of my favorite moments in the film, “A Beautiful Mind” was when the Judd Hirsch character Dr. Helinger (who was the department chair at Princeton where Russell Crowe’s character, the protagonist John Nash), took an agitated and confused doctoral candidate Nash to the mathematics department tea room at the university.

In the hallway just at the entry to the tea room, Helinger and Nash discussed Nash’s lack of work, which resulted in threatening his PhD candidacy as well as his appointment to a coveted position at the prestigious Wheeler Institute at MIT after attaining said PhD.

Helinger interrupted Nash’s clucking and excuses and barters for more time and he tersely instructed him to look at a gentleman, presumably a senior mathematics professor of some countenance sitting alone at a table covered by a draping ecru linen tablecloth in this gorgeous room of soaring coffered ceilings, wrought iron glass windows, Norman moldings, and cherrywood walls.

What they were witnessing was “the ceremony of the pens” which I just learned this very second upon researching it that it was completely fictitious. Well… that sort of blows the moment, doesn’t it?

ANYWAY, in the now-discovered fictitious moment (despite its significance to me and this post — this revelation is totally killing my buzz on the movie, by the way), the ceremony was to make big noise deal to smart someone teacher long time who’d done has math real good at college the.

Shit, I don’t even feel like writing well anymore.

What the what?! Really? Resist urge to edit and start all over. This is not what I do… I write IN the moment.

Excuse me a moment. Please hit play:

ONWARD… there is a point to all this: Nash is frantic, begging for more time; Helinger essentially says shut up and watch the now entirely fictitious frigging ceremony of the #)(%@_! pens.

When the fictitious ceremony was over, Helinger immediately asked Nash what he saw. Nash ~~supposedly~~ blurted reflexively, “recognition.”

Helinger ~~supposedly~~ corrected him and firmly said, ~~supposedly~~ thrusting his ~~fake~~ right fist, “No. Achievement.”

Hell, I don’t know what to believe. Curse you, director Ron Howard! I do know that Hirsch did thrust his fist for emphasis at the Nash character in that building when the cameras were rolling to show a moment of truth whilst witnessing a completely made-up ceremony at an Ivy-League university.

On Mars.

The point is, as it doesn’t matter what I’ve researched since starting this post (honestly, I was just trying to get the name of the Hirsch character and to learn the real name for the fake ceremony of the pens), is that achievement is more important than recognition.

Because Judd Hirsch said so.

This brings me to my current moment of self-actualization (and the post would’ve been a lot shorter had the entire ceremony not been made up…I’m letting this go…NnnnnnNnN).

My point: yes. Achievement matters more than recognition. Recognition is a construct of the ego; it requires outside validation and external gratification and it will hardly ever be enough; it’s constant and never ending. Think Madonna. Think Schwarzenegger and Stallone at the Golden Globes:

Better yet… don’t. My apologies. Wow. That’s gonna stay in my mind for a while.

It’s all well and good to want to be recognized for our work; but that shouldn’t be the goal.

Achievement is an actual experience: it is quantified and reliable internally and measured by a sense of accomplishment and pride by creating something or doing something that matters to us. It is largely a private experience. Achievement and accomplishment can build upon themselves as well and that’s good. We want to feel good about what we do; it’s nice… but does lack of recognition invalidate our achievements? No. Who cares if no one notices. Really… think about it. Like this: because that pens ceremony was completely made up does its message take away its significance? ~~Maybe.~~ No.

So this leads me to another self-acutalization, not based on a fictitious ceremony (sorry, I’m still pretty steamed about that): in order to build more pride and more enthusiasm for what we do (I’m really talking to myself here, you’re just sticking around to see if I come up with anything of any real value): we need to feel good about what we have done. I’ve been noticing this:

When someone asks me what I do, I usually sigh-speak, “I am a SAHM, but…” and that’s wrong. I need to build value and esteem into what I do here as a mother of three boys, because guess what: this gig is tough. I vacillate on this, clearly, I’ve written about it before, but the point is this, and I’m feeling closer now than the last time I dipped in this pool: I’m doing a good job. My kids are healthy, smartasses, and clever. They have friends, they have outlets and they don’t return the tools they borrow or bring their laundry down. This is all normal behavior. RIGHT?!

Instead of kicking a rock every time I think about the entirely huge reality that my book won’t outsell the Bible (especially not if I never publish it a*hem, Molly…) I need to be OK with the fact that I wrote one because that’s a big deal. (But… it would be nice to put it to bed and see what happens… Nnnn. That’s semi-recognitionistic isn’t it?)

These are the ideas that are floating around my head since giving up Facebook for Lent. I’m pretty cool with that decision; I haven’t thought in status-update mode yet today.

So here we are. Feel good about what you Have Done so that you will feel good about what you Will Do. We all have to start somewhere. I’m not looking for a ~~pen~~ medal (that’s good, because now I feel better that John Nash doesn’t have all those pens because… that would be wrong). But Nash did win the Nobel Prize in 1994.

I’m looking for self-satisfaction. That’s tough these days what with everyone seeking their 15 minutes of fame. It’s hard to know the difference. Or it used to be… I think I’m getting a handle on it. Self-satisfaction with personal achievement means you’re good with what’s going on; that if you kicked the bucket, you’d be OK with how your life has turned out, based on your own assessment.

If you haven’t seen the film, you should. It’s largely true; Nash did have schizophrenia and he has overcome it, and he is still affected by hallucinations. Here’s a nice moment that ~~likely~~ never happened:

The take away is this: be happy and proud of what you’ve done. If nothing else: it keeps the flow of good energy going in the universe and that, my friends, is HUGE.

Thank you.