On Boxing Day, I spoke with my mother-in-law. She is 97. I mentioned that my ongoing New Year project is focusing on how to best spend my remaining years and how acutely aware I am how few they may be. She said, “Tell me about it!”
She has increasing aches and pains, naps often, yet still takes full responsibility for her 15-year-old great-grandson, including driving him to soccer or basketball practice in her new-this-year car. Such a lesson in what a person can be. She’s tapped the potential we all possess.
A Truly New Year
As a new year approaches, I’m reflecting, but also refocusing, on what really matters. In the last four years, like the mythical frog in the slowly heated cook pot, we have all normalized daily assaults on decency, truth, and the very fabric of our Constitution. This year, our non-leader added his denial and non-response to the pandemic. His abdication of leadership brought our nation five times the death rate per capita than the rest of the world.
Dark indeed, and so normalized, that it takes deliberate effort to remember what’s truth, reality, and worthwhile — the light in our lives and the world around us. Let me share the latest twist on one way I remind myself what’s important.
Volunteering . . . Now Online!
Call it volunteering, being of service, community involvement, whatever; the reality is that I’m the one getting so much out of volunteering as a reading coach for primary school students. This is my eighth year, and it’s gone online. This has both drawbacks and new opportunities.
I don’t get to enjoy watching the boundless enthusiasm and joy of the students on their school playground. Quite the contrary. Now I’m an involuntary Zoom intruder into the student’s home. As the second-grade teacher sends me and the student to our on-line breakout room, she jokingly reminds us that if we don’t have a technical problem, it wouldn’t be Zoom. So far she’s 100% correct. But these glitches proved to be unexpected and surprising learning opportunities for the student and for me.
The first time I tried to screen-share the digital book we’re reading together, Yolanda (not her real name) found she could not see what I saw, she suggested, “We can use one of my books, Mr. Barry.” I had no idea where that would lead, but was totally charmed by her take-charge attitude. We fumbled through the reading, though I’m sure she didn’t notice, being so excited as she led us out of the technical black hole.
Yolanda has initiated many similar, creative, on-the-spot solutions, which I enthusiastically support. As I mentioned in an earlier blog, I see my reading coaching as a doorway to the bigger goal, that the children experience success, competency, and mastery of themself and their world. Surprisingly I now find that if I stand back and let them be themselves, they will use the Zoom meeting to take steps along that path. It is another reminder that every setting presents us with opportunities, if only we notice.
I’m so excited by what the new year might bring. The vaccine spreads across our nation, bringing us a more normal existence, accompanying a more normal White House. Right now, that looks good enough. Everything else will be icing on the cake as I’ll try to stay focused on what truly matters — each and every moment.
My best wishes to you as we share this amazing gift — life.
A joyous 2021.
Please give me your ideas or suggestions on this or other blogs. I do appreciate your feedback.
Thank you.
me, Barry Phegan
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