When you come to a fork in the road . . . . take it!
That was my father's advice.
Yesterday, just at the fork in the road was a 98 year old woman with a shovel and an ice breaker, working away at the snow which had been packed in a corner of her driveway by a heedless snowplow. She was clearing a space for the new high tech trash barrels that the City of Newton had supplied its citizens over the summer.
And watching her were her neighbors, two young men standing strong and tall on the porch in front of their rented house, smoking, relieving their boredom.
Taking the fork in the road, I hurried home to get my own shovel, and returning on foot to help the old lady, shovel in hand, I passed the two on the porch. Come on and help. . . no answer; come on, you're not going to watch an old lady shovel without offering her help. . . no answer. What good are your muscles and your youth? Said the one, I'm going somewhere. . . And I knew exactly where he and his pal would be going, though I didn't tell them. And anyway, I thought with guilty satisfaction, they would be getting there much sooner than they thought. After all, they were smoking.
A recent post referred to the fact that your father read the Bible in several languages. I'm pretty sure that somewhere in there are some suggestions regarding forgiveness.
ReplyDeleteOn Dec. 26, NYC received nearly 2 feet of snow. In the Astoria section of Queens, the N-train runs elevated above 31st Street. My friend Cameron, on his way to visit his girlfriend, noticed that the stairs heading down to the street level were not cleared of snow. He saw several elderly people hanging on for dear life as they tried to descend the stairs. He thought that for some of these people, if they fell, that would be the beginning of the end. (Break a hip, a femur, and end up in an old-age home wasting away.) He approached the MTA official working in the token booth and asked him, Why haven't the stairs been cleared. The official barely answered with the slightest shrug of his shoulders. So Cameron, taking matters into his own hands, went to his girlfriend's apartment, borrowed a shovel from the super, and went and cleared the stairs on his own.
ReplyDeleteGood for Bethel, and Cameron - and perhaps the person in the best position for forgiving would be the 98-year-old! When others exhibit lack of responsibility, etc., it is good to call them on it, as Bethel did - even though often the immediate response is face-preserving defiance, as happened, the young kids will remember the rebuke, and are the more likely to change their behavior in future.
ReplyDeleteYes, calling people on bad behavior is fine and may have a helpful impact in the long run. But sounding gleeful about someone's (anyone's)potential impending death is not at all like my mother and therefore bothered me. That was the basis for my comment.
ReplyDeleteLiterary license, my dear; certainly not wishing the naughty boys ill.
ReplyDeleteOkay. I give up. Lord, forgive them for they know not what they do.
ReplyDeletebethel's persian shot is the giveaway, Nisha. she was mixing, as in a bowl, the seriousness of the boys' demeanor with the cultural churlishness of 'smoking'. that churlishness had its origin in 19th century fundamentalism, a variant that occurred late in the ebbing tide of the Reformation Church. it took 'secular humanism' (is there any other kind?) a full century to be converted to the sin of smoking and the inevitable consequences (except for those blessed (sic) few whose genetic inheritance includes a gene which resists cancer in most of its forms) So, the fundamentalists gained something in their century long battle against sin, the american medical society and the surgeon general! for a daughter of both traditions to take comfort and the moral high ground of smug satisfaction is something that should be allowed at least long enough to catch one's breath following the end of the post. :)
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