By Dr. Bruce Smith ——Bio and Archives--April 18, 2023
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Many of these columns are frankly nostalgic. I enjoy going back in my memory to golden moments and those brief videos of the mind where people I knew flit across the screen for a few seconds, alive again so I can savor their lessons.
I go back to these memories because they’re meaningful to me and because I have lots of them. They influenced me and made me who I am. Some of those moments struck me as they happened and have stayed with me ever since. For example, I clearly remember the moment when I first noticed that my dad deeply loved his mother. No words were exchanged. We had arrived at the house for a visit in the cold weather.
My grandmother offered to make coffee for her and my dad, but my grandfather never drank it. She made instant coffee so it only took a minute for the water to boil. As she poured the water, looking down at the cups, I saw him look at her in his quiet way, but with such love in his eyes. He smiled just a little, like she did. I was just through a doorway in the next room, but I froze in place to avoid disturbing the scene. I was only about eight, so I didn’t know the stories yet. I hadn’t heard about how she had suffered his absence during the war, not knowing if he would come back. It still wasn’t clear to me the trauma she had known when their baby, my dad’s sister, had died in 1925. At my age I thought my grandmother’s love was all focused on me. Here was something new. My grandmother also loved her boy, and that boy had grown up to be my dad. Interesting! I looked at them differently after that. I had gained a new bit of perspective on the world.
Other moments came back to me later, but they were there to revisit when I acquired the context to appreciate them. There were simple things like digging post holes and planting corn. I sat on an open platform combine with my grandfather to harvest soybeans. There was laundry day with the wringer washer and the laundry stove for heating water. There were many days in the big gardens, then canning and making jelly. I remember cattle and rabbits in the barn, along with hogs.
There were adventures in the chicken house, and baby chicks in the tall battery brooder. I saw coal go into the big octopus furnace, and I grew big enough to put some in the door myself. I went to the poultry dressing plant to make bittersweet memories, and I remember my grandmother frying the chickens we ate the next Sunday. I pulled a coil currycomb across the broad sides of a quiet black angus cow, taller than I was, in the warm sunshine. There were many occasions when my grandparents sat in the shade on the back porch, and somewhere sudden wind from a thunderstorm slammed doors shut in the house. Now and then an old friend pulled up out front before walking around to the back of the house to buy eggs.
At the time it all seemed perfectly normal. I assumed everyone had grandparents like these. They never said, ‘Now watch this and remember.’ They just went about living their quiet lives, reading the evening paper, and looking forward to the next day when they would continue their satisfying work. They always looked forward to visits from me or my brothers. I always knew I would find unconditional love there, but I didn’t discover the name for it until much later.
Without fanfare and without any pretense whatsoever, they showed me how to do it. They lived their lives with virtue and love and a grounding in reality and family.
Like teachers, we may never know the effect we have on people. We may never hear the way even a small gesture or a kindness might affect someone who notices from just across the doorway. Likewise, the friendly but firm declaration of a boundary for behavior could go unnoticed or even meet some resistance, but later on there is no telling when the vital lesson will be recalled.
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What I’m asking is that we show them a way, not necessarily the way. Telling them it’s the only way will likely evoke some resistance. In reality, it’s only one way of many. They’ll have to choose for themselves sooner or later, and nobody likes to be shoved or ordered around. Show them a way that works for you. It might even be a way that you hope will work for you in the future. That is to say, you might be in the building phase. You might have a way to go yet. Tell them what you have in mind. “When we get this working right in a few years, we want to be able to have our own sweet corn and green beans from the garden, and maple syrup from the trees out there in the woods. We want to be able to have you over to visit, and maybe you’ll bring some friends. When there’s a blizzard, we’ll sit around the stove and check the soup now and then until it’s ready. And we’ll always be glad to have you stay with us.” And then you can cinch it gently. “Maybe you’d like to have a place like this one day.” Then let it go. It’s enough to plant the idea.
It’s perfectly fine to plan events that might be memorable. Build a birdhouse. Go fishing. Find frog eggs and let them hatch in an aquarium before turning them loose. Pick apples or raspberries. Make a sturdy breakfast, then go burn it up on the woodpile. Look for turtles or bird nests. Help the neighbors with their lawn. Read aloud in the evening. Tell them about the cornfield at Antietam, about Thomas at Chickamauga, about your dad at Remagen, or your cousin at Chu Lai. Tell them how you met your true love. Show them how to pet a cat when she’s dozing in the sun. Scratch a pig’s back. Pick something in the garden and eat it on the spot. There are lots of choices.
What kids need and will always need is a grounding in reality. It’s all fine to have great toys and an imagination to go with it, but if toys and fantasy are all we can offer, then I wonder about the letdown that is sure to come. They need a familiarity with the here and now that can never come from a small screen with ginned-up cartoon voices. Do we want them to derive meaning in life from an electronic device? What are we offering as an alternative? What are we showing them when we hand them a phone to keep them distracted as we go through one of the most interesting places on earth, a grocery store? Where does all this bounty come from? How was it all delivered to this place in this little town just in time for me to come in and buy some of it?
What am I saying? It isn’t just the kids. We all need the grounding. We need to seek and secure meaning every day. We need to show them that there is something else, something deep, something eternal. We need to improve our lot in life, not just wallow in it. And we need to demonstrate this to them.
There are broader issues. How should free people live? Where does the meaning in our lives originate? Who gets to decide if I want a horse or an electric vehicle? What’s for supper? How do free people govern themselves? What keeps us from anarchy and chaos? How should we treat people? Why is that old white cup in the keepsakes cabinet?
If we are much luckier than we deserve to be, someone may actually recall a moment when we taught them something, or when we changed their lives just a little bit. Then we can close our eyes and remember those moments of our own.
One way or the other, we are teaching them.
They’re all gone now. Grandma Smith died in ’65 and Grandpa in ‘82. Pop passed in ’99, and Mother just two years ago. And yet, they still teach me every day. They’re still there for me, steady in their quiet ways, showing me how they did it.
So, dear reader, I bring you back to the title of this little essay. Show them how to do it. I ask you to model for young people, friends, and family the way you live a good life.
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P.S. To our dear friends in the far True North: The snow birds are on their way back home to you for the summer. We’ve enjoyed them so much during our milder than usual winter along the Old National Road here in the Heartland. They’re always cheerful and sociable. They roosted for a while in the arbor over the walkway. Their numbers have been tapering down the last few days and today I have seen none at all. We will look forward to seeing them in their increased numbers when the chill Fall days are upon us again. Thank you for sharing them with us.
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Dr. Bruce Smith (Inkwell, Hearth and Plow) is a retired professor of history and a lifelong observer of politics and world events. He holds degrees from Indiana University and the University of Notre Dame. In addition to writing, he works as a caretaker and handyman. His non-fiction book The War Comes to Plum Street, about daily life in the 1930s and during World War II, may be ordered from Indiana University Press.