Thoughts for a Good Life - 8/19/2013

This was the thought on 8/17 in Thoughts for a Good Life:

That which is bitter to endure may be sweet to remember.

I like this thought. It makes me consider that silver lining in the hard things, the crappy things. Of course there are still bitter times I’m sure will never be sweet to remember, but this quote has me thinking.  Here are a couple of bitter times I’ve now reconsidered:

Thought 1:  My senior year of high school our new coach loaded us on a bus, took us to a field and made us run. We had no conditioning, no warning…get off the bus and run. Run a mile he said, and do it in X number of minutes or you are off the team. WTF? This guy was crazy! It was August, nearly 100 degrees and I hated running & at that moment I hated him. The sweet part isn’t that the coach turned into mentor (18yrs later, still don’t like the guy). The sweet part is that I did it. I actually did it. I came in 2^nd to last, it hurt, it made no sense to me (still doesn’t) but I did it. So the sweet in it is that I finished and I look back and know I can do it, if I had to, I could run a solid mile.  

Thought 2:  My grandparents have a 120 acre farm. They grow & sell vegetables, going on 30+ years now the local farmer’s market. It’s a family business and we are all expected to help. We are paid in fresh veggies & now awesome stories to share. At the age of 8 however; these are not acceptable forms of payment! If you’ve never picked black-eyed peas, well, you aren’t missing much. They are harvested in July/August, the hottest part of the year and it gets damn hot here. We have a low-tech farm, you sit on an upside down bucket and pick, move the bucket down the row and keep on picking. On one miserable, humid day, I stood up in the middle of picking and declared, “I’m not picking another pea!”. My Memaw said, that’s fine Amber, go sit in the pick-up, but you won’t eat another pea all summer, not only that, you won’t eat another veggie off this farm all summer. Fine by me I said. I can still see her in the field, pointing her dirt-stained finger at me. Just daring me to keep walking. Unfortunately for me, I did.

I didn’t realize how much I really loved those veggies. That day was miserable, but my stance led to a miserable summer. We had a home-cooked supper nearly every night of my childhood. It was torture to sit and watch those bowls of fresh, buttered veggies passing by my plate. It also hurt me to know that I’d let my family down… disappointed them. My picking strike only happened once. It was bitter to endure, but pretty sweet to remember.  My pea picking strike has been retold many times in our family; I’ve served as a warning & lesson to others. I’m so thankful for that lesson though, it taught me to really appreciate the efforts of hard work and now I know exactly what to do when one of my kids decides to strike!

 

 

Scrapbook page  w/ pic of my mom at the Farmer's Market. I scrapped this page in 2002. I look at this page and think my life & my pages have gotten a lot more beautifully complicated.