Little Things

A second chance

This weekend we kicked off the summer camp staff training season with our first of many workshops. In honour of summer camp season, I wanted to share a story that I love telling, about a little boy in a program I ran many moons ago. Now that I'm a mama, I think about this little guy a lot, and hope that wherever he is, he's ok. Here's the story:

When I was sixteen I worked as a leader of a day camp in Hudson, a little town just outside of Montreal. My friend Carol-Ann and I had about 25 kids in our program that summer, and one of them was a little boy named Jake. At eight years old, Jake was the rudest, most obnoxious child either of us had ever met. He beat up little kids, swore at mothers playing with their babies in the park, and walked around with a perma-frown on his face. He had so much anger inside him that he didn’t know what to do with it. After two weeks of relentless efforts to try and “discipline” Jake, Carol-Ann and I sat down to discuss what to do. We didn't want to throw him out of our program, but we were getting so many complaints from parents about him that it looked like we were going to have no choice.

Just as we were about to call our supervisor, Carol-Ann said, “Wait. Maybe we should try to change our behaviour towards him, instead of trying to get him to change. Maybe we haven’t given him a fair chance”. I didn’t understand. What did she mean?

“Maybe”, she said with her sixteen year-old smile, “we should just try loving him instead of disciplining him”. Hmmm. An experiment. I was game, so we decided to give him another shot. One week. We vowed to inundate him with love for one whole week, every chance we got. We wouldn’t criticize him at all, wouldn’t get angry with him. We would just love him. And see what would happen.

I know this sounds hokey, but that is what we did. At first, Jake didn’t know what had hit him. We gave him extra attention, listened to every word he said. We made him our “helper”, and he never left our side. We poured compliments on him freely, every chance we could get; and for the first time, he started to respond to us in a positive way. He began to smile, to listen, to sing; he even played well with other children! Of course, there were times when he would slip up, and throw sand or swear or do something he knew was wrong. But he soon learned what became our routine for the rest of the summer: that whenever he was angry, he could come and squeeze one of our hands, and we would go for a walk with him around the baseball field. He could kick the dirt, and tell us why he was angry, and by the time we had walked around the field a few times, he had gotten his anger out and was ready to rejoin the other kids.

It didn’t take long to discover where Jake’s anger came from. He told us one day that his Dad had been in jail for beating up his Mom, and that now that his Dad was back home, there were problems again. Most days, Jake was at the park before we even got there, and every night he would stay until we climbed on our bikes and went home ourselves.

I don’t know what happened to Jake at the end of that summer. I know that he was taken away to a foster home in Ottawa the following year, and I can only hope that he has been loved and supported in tangible ways by his foster parents since then. I hope that he was surrounded by people in his school and his community who were willing to see beyond his anger momentarily to discover what a marvelous little boy he was, with so much to give. 

As for me, I learned something that summer that has stayed with me ever since: that sometimes people just need a second chance. They need to be loved. They need to be listened to, and they need to be treated with respect. And even when we think they’re rude, or grumpy, or just plain mean, we can still be gentle with them. Who knows, they may just surprise us…

I tested this theory out on the cable lady the other day, by the way. You know, just to see if it still worked. My first interaction with the woman who was installing our cable that morning had not been good: she was rude and aggressive, and I vowed to give her a wide berth. But as I was making myself my morning latte, I thought of Jake, and smiled to myself. Maybe it would work. I went outside where she was drilling a hole in our wall and asked her, in my kindest, most sincere voice, if she would like a coffee. She didn’t turn her head, but she did mutter a small, “sure”.

I went to the kitchen and whipped up the finest latte the world has ever seen, pouring my love and attention into it along with the foamed milk, sugar, and cinnamon dusting. Well. Let me tell you. An innocent bystander might have thought we were old friends, so warm and jovial was our banter from that moment on. All because of a cup of coffee.   

Or a second chance. 

peacocks and places...

We go often to Maplewood Farm, a family friendly place in North Vancouver. It is Sam's very favourite place in the whole world. Watching Sam (for the fourteenth time this year) get so excited by the peacock and the turkey and the baby goats got me thinking about "our places". We all have them: those places where, as soon as we get there, a certain lightness comes over us - a joy; a smile that goes all the way down to our toes. We breathe. We dwell. We belong.

The Indigo Girls sing, "My place is of the sun". What is your place?

Sam's place is of the farm, there's no question about that. He lights up like a Christmas tree as soon as he gets there and throws a fit when it's time to go. (You can do that when you are three).

Max's place is of the hockey (if you'll allow me to destroy the English language for the sake of symmetry here). The hockey rink; our deck and basement where he plays endless hours of ball hockey with his cousin Jonah; Hockey Night in Canada; aisle 8 in London Drugs where he buys his hockey cards; basically, anywhere and anything that involves a stick and ball, hockey cards, or the Canucks. That is Max's place. To him, heaven on earth. (He's a good Canadian boy :)

Ben's a little young for us to know what his place will be, although right now, it seems that his place is where his people are. He is starting to know who those people are, and when his brothers or Dad walks into a room, he rewards them with a huge smile. I must admit, though, that I still get the most affection from him...and I spend many a moment just basking in it. It is pure bliss. (I've got to soak it up, I know it won't last for long!).

And as for me? Well, my place is of the sea, and always has been. When I was a little girl, our family used to go to Wells Beach, Maine, for two weeks every summer. I can still feel the excitement that I felt running through my veins the night before we left for the beach. I would toss and turn in my bed, sleepless, the anticipation just too much for me to shake off. How could I sleep? We were going to the beach!

My love of the sea has taken me many places in my life since those days: to a job on a cruise ship (where I fell asleep looking out my porthole in wonder from the top bunk for the entire first week), to travel on many coastlines, to a home on the West Coast. After fourteen years of being here, I still look around most days and think, "I can't believe I LIVE here!" Yes, the sea is my place; where I breathe, where I dwell, and where I belong.

 

   

   

carrot soup

 

Today, I sat down in the warm spring sunshine on my front steps and ate a beautiful bowl of homemade carrot soup. It was 12:30pm.

I am grateful. I am grateful for the sunshine, and for the lilacs in my yard, and for the simple pleasure of sitting down for a moment to enjoy a cup of my favourite soup. And, of course, for all the people who enabled me to make this soup.  And I don’t mean the lovely people who grew the carrots and onions and ginger, or harvested them or packaged them or drove them in trucks to the little veggie store down the street.  Or even the kind people at that veggie store who stacked them in pretty displays and decided to sell their biggest bag of carrots to me last week for only a dollar.  I mean other people.

First, there are the teachers at the Montessori school which my 6 year-old attends. They help by making Max’s school experience interesting enough so that Max actually agrees to go every day, and not stay home with me. If Max was home, I would have been playing hockey outside, not peeling carrots and onions and ginger.

Then there is my friend Fiona, who ever so kindly agreed to pick up my 3 year-old from school and take him and her daughter home for lunch and then to art class. Had Sammy been home, I would have been blowing bubbles outside with his new fancy pack of bubble wands, and not dicing and slicing those same carrots, onions, and ginger.

Of course, I can’t forget the littlest contributor to this delightful experience: my 6 month-old, Ben. Ben, who agreed (by not screaming his head off) to go for a walk with his Momma on this sunny Tuesday morning; and who decided to take that opportunity to slip into a luxurious two hour slumber, long after his Momma had parked his stroller in the front yard and proceeded to prepare the soup while running out to check on him every 3 minutes.  Had Ben been awake, I would have been sitting on that front step nursing him, not quietly spooning carroty goodness into my mouth. 

You know, I’ve been looking at that big bag of carrots in my fridge for days now, waiting, waiting for the opportunity to turn them into my Grandfather’s famous carrot ginger soup. Sure, I still have 7 loads of laundry that might not get done today, and a stack of dishes overflowing in my sink, but what a perfect, delicious day this has turned out to be! I am so grateful.