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.