Tonight I shared a dinner table with families from my daughter's Kindergarten class. It was an important night of relationship building hosted by the teacher. I found out I'd been neighbors with a family in the class for five years and we never connected. I shouldn't be shocked, but I really was surprised. I mean we lived half a block away. My kids were surprised too, because they pride themselves on been able to sniff out other children within 100 yards of our house. :-) That was a good surprise.
Later, I found myself in a conversation that stuck with me. The lady is raising her daughter with her partner. They're affluent women raised in New England, who like so many East Coast people found that SF is one of the world's amazing places to live. As we chowed down our bounty from the potluck of family favorites we both found ourselves appreciating a Salvadoran tamale. Tamales always remind me of my childhood. I recounted memories of my mother, aunts, and grandmother cooking Mexican sweet tamales and buenuellos (deep fried corn tortilla sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar) diligently on New Year's Eve. It was so much fun to have our house filled with family, especially cousins my own age! We laughed, played, ate, played more and ate more late into the night. The mother responded that she had never experienced anything like that. She told me she would loved to have had some kind of point of reference like my memory. As I thought of that, I think that the more affluent and self-sufficient we become, the less room we have for others. As that becomes so, like so many other things, it becomes a matter of choice.
As I consider the customs and habits of my family I want to have together experiences like this for my children. It's important that we not be so "self sufficient" that we don't need others. The truth is that we have need of many people. I'm incomplete without the community of good people in my life. My children should be influenced by other adults they can look to as role models. Heaven help them if all they have is me! We don't have room for everyone in our lives, but who are we making space for? Who should we invite and include? God has given a great measure of blessing. It's meant to be shared.
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2 comments:
Hey Dave, nice thoughts, but don't be so hard on yourself if all your kids have are you. You're doing a great job at pouring your self into your kids. I just read a book I know that you would enjoy, "Letters from Dad," by Greg Vaughn. It's one of the few books I had to read in one sitting. It deals with many things your mentioned in your blog concerning leaving a legacy for your children. God Bless, Tony
Tony:
Thanks for the book recommendation. I'll check it out. I don't think I was really being hard on myself in that commment. I'm really making a statement that I know I can't teach my children completely by myself. I love that each of them will learn much from people who know things I have no clue about. I don't want to know everything - I just can't anyway. So many of thier skills and knowledge will come from other people. Some of those people are my good friends - I want most of them to be my allies! Does that make sense? Hey man, thanks again for your thoughts. We rub off on each other and become better men because we influence one another.
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