Those Pesky Memories

My earliest memory is sitting in a high chair at the family dinette, with my back to the kitchen, happily eating cut-up pieces of pancake. Behind me, my sturdy country grandmother from Alabama had fallen face-first to the linoleum with a spatula in her hand. Without missing a bite I said, "Granny fall down" as effortlessly as I might have said, "more please."

My mother's mother, Granny, had come to "help" my mom, who was ripe for popping out my little sister. On that particular morning Granny apparently had become light-headed, standing over the stove flipping flapjacks, and had fainted just behind my high chair. My sister was born 2 days later, probably arriving earlier than predicted because my mother could take just so much "help."

I am reminded of Shel Silverstein, Where the Sidewalk Ends. "And some kind of help is the kind of help that helping's all about. And some kind of help is the kind of help we all can do without."

Granny certainly meant well. She had tried to provide the kind of help that helping's all about. In fact she probably had provided it, until she keeled over and suddenly became the kind of help that needed the kind of help that helping's all about. It wasn't her fault that things took an unwelcome turn. But it still left my mother, 40 weeks and counting, on bed rest with an additional patient in the next room. At that moment in time, I feel sure Mom would have categorized Granny's help as the kind of help she could do without, just then.

Which kind of help would The Help have fallen into?

If we're talking about Minny in the movie The Help, for which Octavia Spencer won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress, then I believe we can safely say, both.

Minny was a surly sort of servant. The kind of help nobody wanted. She had a streak of nasty in her the width of a polecat's hind quarters. The white women in control of the town blackballed her even though she was certainly a capable employee, and even though they certainly had it coming. According to them, Minny's kind of help was the kind of help we all could do without. But as the Ghost of Christmas Present sagely noted in the Christmas classic "Scrooged," "Sometimes you have to slap them in the face just to get their attention."

And sometimes you have to bake'em a pie.

Ultimately, Minny's kind of help was what helping is really all about. Like bad medicine, sometimes help can taste like...well, it tastes real bad. But thank goodness Minny was the kind of help that didn't put up with...well, with what she served up. Her kind of help helped things change. Things needed to change. And her kind of help had the courage to insist on it.
I often call Janie Mitchell, Reliable Cook a prequel to The Help because the slaves of Janie's time, and Janie herself, were the original "help," ephemistically speaking.

Which kind of help would Janie Mitchell have fallen into? I believe we can safely say, neither.

Janie was definitely not the kind of help we all can do without, because she was clearly a valued employee. Her career with each family was one of longevity. She performed her duties to the very best of her ability. She cooked and cleaned and cared for her white families. She raised children and grandchildren. She counted her employers as her friends, her family. They were lucky to have her, I say.

But in Civil War Charleston, she was still a slave. And in post-Civil War Charleston, she was still the help. And that kind of help can never be confused with the kind of help that helping's all about.

Last weekend I spoke to a group of educators about Janie Mitchell, Reliable Cook in the hope that our book will become supplemental reading for Language Arts and History classes in middle and high schools. At our presentation half the room was black. I considered, only briefly, softening the presentation for the audience: leaving out the part where she thanks God for her days of slavery, for example. Janie tells an alternative slave story, and I often wonder if that is offensive to black people. Distasteful, as it were. 

But the neatest thing happened. After the presentation one of the black women thanked me for presenting an alternative point of view to that time in southern history. She said, "You know, it wasn't all bad. And we need to hear that too."

Memories are what they are. There's no changing them, no getting them out of your head, no pensieve to retrieve a particular remembery and hand it off to someone else to experience the same sensory input, the same frame of reference, the same emotions that were available to the rememberer. Janie's memories, shared with us in her journal, are set in the framework of the social system of her time. We read her memories based on our framework, and logically find it egregious that things were as they were. Her memories are not ours, and ours are not hers.

In this time now, we have new memories, based on our shared history. Remembering that fact is the best way to help ourselves move forward.

Post-Christmas Post

Christmas makes me sad.

It's never perfect like I suppose I expect it to be. The commercialism of it all leaves me feeling like I missed the message. I hate that I get wrapped up in wrapping, buying, shopping, cooking, cleaning, decorating, and entertaining. And all the work--physical and emotional--trying to create Christmas in my ideal image leads to a massive denouement that leaves me flat like a deflated balloon.

This year the only time we spent in church, during the entire Advent season, was on Christmas Eve. And that was on a whim. Apparently, keeping Christ in Christmas was one of  many things that didn't get checked off my to-do list.

Some Christmases I have worked all year long, hoping to spread out the chores, just so Christmas could be quiet and reflective. But it never seems to pan out that way. In my mind, though, The Perfect Christmas continues to be a sought-after ideal.

I recently told my sister that the Christmas in my mind is quiet. It takes place in the mountains, in a small log cabin, and the only gifts are bird seed, table scraps, and suet. I am putting up preserves. It's snowing.

Trouble is, there are no other humans in that scenario. So what's wrong with me?

And here's my self-diagnosis. Maybe you have some of the same symptoms. Maybe this will help you too.

Call me an old curmudgeon if you wish, but the Christmases of my memory were more meaningful. We used to have to wait for that special toy. Baked ham was served once a year, and fudge was made only at Christmas. Stores weren't decorated until after Thanksgiving.

Now, we are all drunk on the must-haves. We wait for nothing. If we want something, we buy it, from houses we cannot afford to the latest techno toy. There are no more Christmas lists, at least none that exhibit any amount of self-denial.

We do not write letters. We email. We Skype. We text. The world is a smaller place. And this smaller planet no longer has need for a child's artistic, imperfectly drawn Christmas cards, or once-a-year Christmas phone calls. If we want to watch "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" we just pop it in the dvd player. No more waiting for that magical night when it came on television once a year.

When our family went on vacation, it was either to Myrtle Beach or to visit relatives. If summer included the beach trip, then it was something Mom and Dad saved for all year long. I was 26 before I visited a Disney Theme Park. My daughter, on the other hand, has been to Disney at least six times. She is 15 years old. That's every other year, folks.

Humans are the only animals with the ability to delay gratification for a significant period of time. But we choose instant gratification more often than not, grasping the quick reward rather than the long-term benefit. In doing so, we as a race, as the king of the hill in terms of superiority in nature, are collectively choosing to take a step back on the evolutionary scale.

Ironic, wouldn't you agree?

And the problem with that is that there is value in waiting. There is value in working for something.

When we must work toward a goal we often come out on the other side more resolved, more committed, more appreciative. It toughens us. We form personality "scars." And just like physical scars, personality scars are "thicker skin" that give us dimension and build character. They are the clear evidence of determined growth, despite setbacks.

I recently read an article that described just this phenomenon. It articulated very well that the tough times of our parents taught them to cope. Psychological researcher Dr. Mark D. Seery found that people who experienced no negative life events shared similarities to people who had a miserable life.

Bingo.

Perhaps I find it difficult to enjoy Christmas because I expect too much out of it. Perhaps I am like a spoiled little kid who didn't get everything on her list, and now is throwing a temper tantrum rather than being grateful for what I did receive.

So how to fix? Do I deprive myself of things I would like to have?

Yes. If I don't need them. Yes, even if I think I do. And how much do I really need, after all? Maybe I teach myself to wait, instead of pedagogically determining to teach others. Maybe I start with me.

Do I make a conscious effort to appreciate the people in my life who are important to me?

Yes. Above all. Because relationships are the most important ties to other souls we have here.

Do I quit worrying about the gifting and the wrapping and the cooking and the decorating?

Yep. I do not allow the trappings of commercialized Christmas to overshadow the holyday, while still being careful not to neglect friends and family in some meaningful way. Maybe that looks more like washing my mother's car once a month for her, or showing up at a neighbor's house with a steaming pot of beef stew in advance of her holiday company's arrival. Maybe I spend time with my daughter in the kitchen, making memories and thumbprint cookies. I definitely spend more time with God, whether that is in church, in nature, or in prayer. He'll meet me anywhere, even the layaway line. He'll even meet me in the tone I take with that rude shopper.

And what do I do when Christmas has come and gone again, and once again I haven't done it well enough?

I take my cue from Clark Griswold's mother. When all Clark's efforts to illuminate the exterior of his house resulted in an infestation of twinkle lights that didn't work, his mother said she could picture it in her mind, and it was beautiful.

I determine to side-step bitterness, and instead, choose thankfulness. "Count your blessings," mother always said. There is eternal value in that commandment, even though it doesn't show up in the first Ten. There is value in being grateful for what I have, rather than ungrateful for what I don't. There is value in remembering that there is value in waiting for something you want most of all. Some things are worth waiting for.

Christmas is worth waiting for.