The Givers of the Greatest Gifts

Today is Grandma Bette's 90th birthday. I was thinking of this a few days ago wanting to do something special for her.

Watching Sofia play, knowing that in two days she would be going to her mom's for the rest of Spring Break, I also knew that Grandma could any day be going away on her own Spring Break, and not coming back.

I had recently been told for the umpteenth time that at the rate I was going I wasn't going to come back either, because I was giving and doing too much. I had one of those out-of-body experiences where you relive a past moment while someone's talking to you in the present.

I was outside the liquor store where I would buy Cue Ball a Mad Dog 20/20 every Friday afternoon, sitting with him against the wall talking. A gang had sent someone to kill me because I told them to leave my students alone. They told me I was choosing to die. I said I was choosing to live, because I was standing up for something right by standing up to something wrong.

Had I not just befriended the ex-con that day who wished I had been his teacher and chose to stand by my side when they showed up, I know I wouldn't be here.

But the fact is, I am here.

Instead of waking up and saying, "Oh no, not another day", I wake up and say, "Oh yes! ANOTHER day!"

Even though I was told what I tried to do yesterday was impossible, the world is better off because I pulled it off. And it didn't kill me.

Nor has making mistakes or wrong choices. Not even my biggest failures and hardest heartbreaks have been the death of me.....because I chose to live from the lessons they taught.

What did I do yesterday that worked? Good! I'm going to keep doing that. I'm going to keep those thoughts and actions alive.

What did I do that didn't work? Good! I'm going to change that. That's going to die. No more of those thoughts and actions today.

This life thing is incredible! Every day is the rebirth of a better me, and literally the dawn of my best self. The same is true for my children, my students and every single person I come in contact with and think about today.

All this together inspired "The Time of Our Life". When I read it to Grandma this morning she was very touched. She shared with me that every morning she wakes up she is very grateful to be alive.

I said, "Others are too!" and excitedly read her some of the comments and emails it received.

Then I heard her start crying.

Already vulnerable from having written "Five Days of Sofia" just a few hours earlier, I told her she was going to make me cry too.

She asked me to share the moment with her.

Even though I couldn't see the computer through my tears, in my mind I saw the faces of those who had commented as I heard my grandmother telling me how glad she was to be alive to receive such a wonderful birthday gift. Hearing this meant a lot to me because just a few years ago she was telling me she didn't know why she was still alive.

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As we laughed and cried I silently thanked each and every person who had taken the time to share their feelings which touched my grandmother's heart so deeply, making her glad to have reached her 90th birthday.

From my experience too much of the world is made up of givers and takers. Resources are used up as quickly as they can be taken, and only replenished in token ways to the people and planet that gave them.

Rarely are there givers and givers. I feel blessed to be a part of such a daily-growing world........where as you give to another you also give to all the lives that person now has the resources to touch, the greatest being life, which when used properly, gives life to everything our hearts dream.

Thank you Givers.......You have Given me more to Give......And I feel even more Alive because of it!

(written 4/2/09 - posted 4/3/09)