Cheapsakes and Generous People

Today's drawing has nothing to do with what I'm writing.  I did a sketch of two kids drawing in the fields of the Land Trust here in Hardwick last summer.   Ididn't draw the Black Angus they were drawing--cows are nosy, and they won't pose but insist, instead, on walking over to check out what you're doing.

I just read an odd little story with my ESL student.  It's called "A Death in the House," and it's about a dirt farmer who finds a dying alien, who is a plant, in his field.  Mose takes the plant in and tries to save it, but it dies in the night.  He buries in and it later grows up as a young plant that wants to return home to the stars in his birdcage spaceship. The theme is generosity.  Mose gives everything to the plant, even his silver dollars (to melt down to fix the broken birdcage).  All Mose has left in his lonely life after giving his fortune in silver to this creature is happiness, something he hasn't felt in years.

I wish I thought that generosity was so simple a way to joy.  In many ways, of course, it is. It feels wonderful if you don't want anything back and the giving is pure.  I find as I get older that this is harder for me to do. When I was younger, raising kids, giving was just habit.  I didn't expect much or anything back because giving was its own reward.  But you can get burned living this way.  Sometimes the people we give to are bottomless pits, and regardless of how much you give, they feel cheated.  Often we're giving out of habit and, instead, need to be given to ourselves. And we always have to give on a budget.

At a certain age, you start adding up the money you have and you try to figure out how many years you'll live and how much money you'll be able to spend each of those years. I hear retired people snarling about how they're on fixed incomes and nobody can expect anything from them anymore. It always sounds so cheap when they say it that way, or so crippled, like nasty people out of Roald Dahl stories who hate children, ice cream, and puppies.  Mr. and Mrs.Twit.


I suppose that my way to be generous has been to give time more than money.  Now that my time is shrinking, I don't want to do that either.  After teaching all day, I have an allotted amount of time that I want to spend coming down from teaching, and that amount is growing into hours of reading, "In Treatment", and eating popcorn.