FROM THE MOUTHS OF BABES AND THE ELDERLY

Two scenes: First. We were driving Carter home from a morning visit to hi pre-school. Nena and Pap (us) were specifically invited because it was the morning when Carter’s class could visit the library and buy books. (The people who run the school are no dummies. Grandparents can go overboard spoiling their grandchildren and we were no exception. I call that “parents revenge. But I digress.) On the way home Arlena asked Carter, for her and for me, what he learned in class. His immediate response: “You were there. You should know.” Well, Duh!

Second: Arlena had just finished making her Mom’s bed (one of the chores we do whenever we visit) and said to her, “Mom, I couldn’t find a matching pair of pillow cases for the bed.” Her Mom’s reply: “I’m not going to have a nervous breakdown over it.” Well, Double Duh!

Sometimes we ask the dumbest questions or say the dumbest things. As Carter so wisely said, why did we ask him what he learned when we were sitting there in the classroom taking it all in? We already knew the answer to the question. But we asked anyway and it seems we often do it all too often. Of course, Carter’s answer, even though it was an elbow in the ribs response, was better than the answer we would often get from his mother and her sisters when we asked them what they had learned in class that day. “Nothing!” was what we heard.

And if we thought Nanny would be upset because her pillow cases didn’t match: well, if she did, if anyone who had something kind done for them did, then we have a problem here. We don’t with Nanny because she can never be thankful enough, which she continues to tell us week in and week out – as if she had to! Obviously she has the same problem as we do here.

Maybe we all do in both instances. Sometimes we ask some very dumb questions because we already know the answer but we ask anyway for who knows what reason, but ask we do. Maybe it’s an insecurity on our part that simply needs reassurance about whatever it is we are asking. Maybe.

And sometimes we think we haven’t done enough when we have already done more than enough, although there are times when even what we have done is not enough because what needs to be done is beyond our capabilities. In life we do what we can the best we can and that is all we can ask of ourselves or all others can ask of us.

Carter’s and Nanny’s responses simply remind me that sometimes I forget that others know we care just by being who we are and by what we do without our needing any thanks or reassurance. And when the shoe is on the other foot, it’s the same. We won’t have a nervous breakdown because we already know what is known.