Lessons From Our Grandfather
2020 we welcomed you as a year of clear, perfect vision. Thank you. As I reflect going into the 9th month of the year I can say that I have seen more clearly this year than I have in years past. When this year arrived I was almost immediately met with an obstacle that called my very character into question. It was a personal attack that rendered me paralyzed in shock and heartbroken. During that time I called on the strength of friends and they prayed for me, as did my parents (all of them). I also found myself looking to the lives of my grandparents for answers and probable solutions to the problems that troubled my soul.
You see, the lessons that came from the mouth of my elders were exemplified by the lives they lived. So when my grandfather told my mid-twenty-year-old-self [and my husband too] to believe in my dreams enough to make them a reality. He said, “Take what you want...then it’s real.” I was wrestling with vocational direction and my sense of call. I was trying to figure out if I wanted to be “just” a teacher. The way my grandfather filled me in that moment changed the trajectory of my life and has continued to form me over a decade later.
“Take what you want...then it’s real.”
“Topsy,” he mumbled, “ya smaht and ya know whatcha be talmbout. Ya ain’t bouta sit ‘roun heh wondren boutcha worf. Ya undastan meh?”* The problem? I was being called to the life of an educator, but my mind had prepared me to go to law school. I wanted to be a public defender and represent those often overlooked and relegated to the margins of society. There was a stigma associated with being a career teacher that it was for women, that teaching was an inferior profession. I did not want people to see me as inferior or having “settled” for a career in education. I wanted to prove that I could be a great attorney, thus gaining the respect of my peers, family members and perhaps naysayers.
My grandfather’s verbal lesson that day was preceded by a physical, kinesthetic lesson in my childhood. On one of our many weekend adventures my grandfather was staining the deck of a client and my 11-year-old hands just had to have a piece of the action. He gave me a brush and a quick lesson on “go[ing] with the grain.” If you follow the grain of the wood not only will the process be smoother but the outcome will be better. Over the years with exposure to the elements it’ll get old and “woe out.” If you go against the grain the deterioration process can happen quicker and look worse than when you go with the grain.
“So, I decided to go with the grain of my life calling. I am an educator, tried and true, through and through.”
So, I decided to go with the grain of my life calling. I am an educator, tried and true, through and through. As perfect vision has revealed in the hindsight of 2020 going with the grain does not decrease the amount of work or diminish the effort required, but it does look better in the long run. Go with the grain, follow the call and center the sacred.