Our Legacy: What is Important

 

Our Legacy: What Is Important?

By Jill Jenkins

As an educator and as a parent, I wondered what is the most important lesson I wanted to instill in my daughter and my students. I recognized that the world I was preparing them for would be so immeasurably different from the world I knew or could imagine.  Do we find the answers in the countless lessons: karate, violin, soccer, little league baseball, volleyball or is it something we need to provide in our homes like the lesson I learned from my maternal grandmother who always served tea at ten A.M. with toast and at four P.M. with a sweet treat?  She made the tea from tea leaves and let it seep for a long time before pouring it into china tea cups. We sat together and chatted about our lives. She would explain that the Americans are always in such a hurry, but by taking our time and enjoying each other’s company is how we became civilized.  I found this advice useful when I taught alternative education.  When a student needed correction, I provided refreshments although not in china tea set, let them talk about their situation and quietly asked questions to lead them to resolve whatever behavioral problem I wanted them to correct.  The conclusion was theirs or so they thought and they felt someone cared because I took the time to listen.

My Family’s Legacy

My mother’s childhood revolved around surviving the great depression. My grandparents used whatever means was possible to feed, and house their children including bootlegging, illegal cock fighting, running a family chicken farm while my grandfather worked full-time as a glazier. My maternal grandparents not only raised six children of their own, but my grandmother’s two brothers and her sister’s two children after her sister’s husband shot his nine-month pregnant wife, and abandoned his two children. Furthermore, they shared the responsibility of caring for my grandfather’s eighty-year-old, widowed mother.  Although my mother wore dresses made from flour sacks, the family still found the resources to feed sack lunches to whatever stranger knocked on their door who might be riding the rails to California.

My father lived with his divorced mother after his alcoholic, philandering father abandoned the family.  His mother took her two young boys: John, five years old and Keith, three years old, to live with her affluent parent’s house.  My father told me he learned the value of a job well done from his grandfather who paid John and Keith five cents for mowing his lawn, which was enough money to go the theater on the corner and I buy an ice cream afterwards.  Each time the boys completed the task, his grandfather would shake his head and say, “It’s not good enough.” They often mowed it three times before they earned their nickel.  Seeing the devastation that his father had caused his mother made him vow that he would always take care of his wife and children and never allow his wife to work. 

 

My Life

My family was never affluent or even middle class, but we did have a loving mother who was always home when we came home from school and a father who provided not only a split-level in a working-class neighborhood, but weekend camping trips and vacations to the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, Disneyland, and we traveled from the Northwest Territories, Alberta, British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada, Arizona, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, and Mexico in our Chevy Suburban and Shasta Trailer. Although we didn’t have the luxury of little league, violin lessons, piano lessons, karate lessons, soccer practice or football little league, we did take tap lessons for twenty-five cents at the Neighborhood House and we had a large extended family who loved us and enjoyed our BBQ on our back patio and our famous Christmas parties.   There was love and structure.  For each meal the table was heaped with food and if an unexpected guest arrived my mother reminded us of our manners, only take a little so everyone gets some.  The food was passed from right to left after a blessing was said and each only took his or her share. Once everyone was served my father would begin and we were free to eat.  It was a happy place but all of us remembered our manners and showed respect to whatever guest we were sharing our meal with. Service to others was one of the most important legacy that my parents left me. My father never passed a stranded motorist without stopping to render assistance. My mother’s house was filled with children of neighbors, friends, and family that she gladly watched while their mothers ran errands, worked or just took a break.  For three years she cared for her elderly mother until she succumbed to the cancer.  They both offered financial assistance and meals to children, grandchildren and neighbors.  When my father’s childhood friend’s daughter found herself pregnant with an out of work teenage husband, they sent her to Utah, where my father helped them find work, an apartment and helped paid the medical expenses for the birth of their baby. 

My College Years   

Although my parents could not understand why I wanted to go to college, with the help of my high school counselor, Dee Anderson, I applied, and got a scholarship to a prestigious, private, liberal arts college.  I soon realized that I was woefully unprepared to compete with my more affluent classmates, who had attended private, parochial or more affluent public schools. I was socially handicapped because I could not swim, ski, ice skate, water ski, ride a horse or a bike and I didn’t play any musical instrument.  My solution was delayed gratification. While my friends partied, I studied, asked a lot of questions and read everything I could. I graduated early with honors. The legacy of my grandparents and my parents had served me well. I had been resourceful to get into college and arrange the scholarship and I used my work ethic to succeed.

Teaching

  Burdened with student loan debt, instead of continuing my education and becoming the attorney I dreamed of being, I took a teaching position at the same high school that I had attended.  I thought I would postpone the dream that I had had since the government had taken my grandmother’s house to built the interstate.  They didn’t give her enough money to buy another chicken farm, so she had settled in a small cottage and my aunt and uncle still living at home had taken out a mortgage to finishing paying off the difference.  I thought this was a huge injustice to a 65-year-old woman with cancer and I dreamed to rectifying such injustices.  However, I soon learned I could make a difference by teaching high school.  I was determined to provide my students with a more rigorous education than I had received. I would cringe when I heard my older colleagues announce that my more rigorous curriculum was unnecessary because these were working class students who rarely attended college.  Like my parents, they saw the world through a generation that had already passed and I felt it was wrong to pigeon-hole students in predetermined futures. My parents legacy of serving others had provided me with a satisfying career.

Parenting

After twelve years of teaching, I became a parent.  As a parent I made a list of all the activities and skills that would have made my colloquial experience easier and I made certain that my daughter experienced them. I sent her to parochial schools, gave her violin and guitar lessons, took her ice skating, roller blading, bike riding and horseback riding. I sent her to drama camp, museums, theater and all kinds of musical performances. I sent her traveling all around the United States and Europe while sacrificing my own vacations, new clothing, and selling assets to pay for her trips: my piano, and my car.  She did well, receiving a BA from my alma mater and MA from a prestigious college in New York.  Although I rarely see her, she has become a successful photojournalist and musician in the Big Apple.

In Conclusion

Life isn’t fair.  Some people have abundance and waste their lives because they never learned to appreciate their luck. Some people have little, but are rich in all the ways that really matter, because they freely share their meager bounty with others.  Lucky for me, I experience life with people of that nature. They gave me everything I needed to be successful and happy.  What is important for children to know:

·         First, a sense of responsibility for themselves, their families, their community and the world;

·         Second, a sense of being loved and valued as a human being;

·         Third, this is a highly competitive world and they are going to need to be highly skilled in some auxiliary activity:

o   The arts

o   Sports

o   An intellectual endeavor.

Schools and parents need to recognize this and provide opportunities for students who are financially handicapped. We can not know where our children’s or students’ lives are going to take them, but we need to teach them to respect one another, have a generous heart, and how to challenge themselves to develop skills.