The Best
I saw this message earlier today…’The happiest people don’t have the best of everything. They just make the best of everything they have.’ A little later, as I was finishing up some sewing projects, I was thinking how true that can be.
Remembering back to my childhood, I felt we had less than most other kids that I went to school with. This came largely because we didn’t live in a neighborhood around the school with concrete sidewalks and paved driveways. We didn’t walk to school, we rode the bus or sometimes our mom drove us. I don’t recall that I spent a whole lot of time dwelling on this social status. It’s just the way that it was.
What I didn’t realize then was just how much did have. We had space. We had lots of space between us and our neighbors. We could play baseball in our yard with our biggest worry being that we may have to crawl through the barbed wire fence and retrieve the ball amongst the horses. Instead of concrete, we had an asphalt road that, on hot summer days, produced puddles of tar bubbles that were a joyous thing to sit and pop. We lived on a dead end road, which I used to think was something like a death sentence. This meant that it was only traveled by an occasional neighbor and that they knew to watch for a young girl sitting in the road popping tar bubbles. Our driveway was not paved it was gravel, which was the perfect material to make miles of roads for Tonka trucks. Our gravel driveway was also the perfect groundwork to run across in bare feet…this was always impressive to a ‘school neighborhood kid’. And unlike the school neighborhood, the houses on ‘death sentence’ road were all built at different times and with different looks. Ours was one of the first ones. It was made of concrete blocks and built entirely by my dad’s own hands. The outside walls were perfect to pitch and catch a baseball against. And they were apparently a perfect hangout for roly-poly bugs. We didn’t have carpeted floors but we did have tile floors that, when combined with Pledge furniture polish and stocking feet, made the best rainy day fun.
We didn’t have a lot of money. Hard, cold winters and rainy springs meant that money was going to be extra tight. I knew this not because they told me but because I would hear them talking quietly about how they would have to stretch the money if the weather didn’t change. Nevertheless, we always had everything we needed. I wouldn’t change anything about my upbringing.
Unknown to me at the time, the material things weren’t the only unique differences between me and some my classmates. Not all, but many of the school neighborhood moms worked during the day. My mom was always at home. While she was a smart woman with business education, her priorities were her home and at church. I’m fortunate that my mom chose to be at home for me and my brother while we were growing up. And I am thankful that she chose to be so involved with our church and that, by doing so, she influenced so many people with her faith.
A lot of the school neighborhood dads wore suits. Not mine! He was a skilled, hard working man in a white t-shirt and concrete dust covered overalls. I definitely wouldn’t have wanted a dad who left every day in a suit with a brief case to go do boring things in an office. I am proud now, as I was as a kid, that I have a dad that contributed more than we may ever know to other people and to his community. His beautiful stone handiwork will most likely outlast us all.
Depending on what you call the best, we maybe didn’t have it. But I know what we had, and it was the best!!
P.S. I still don’t live in a neighborhood by a school
Photo was taken in 1961 and is of baby me in a contraption that Dad made to keep me contained while Mom hung clothes on the clothesline
