When I was little, I got one of those wooden horses that bounced on springs for Christmas. I loved him and rode him every day.
One morning, I came down to the porch and the horse was gone. My mom explained that a poor woman and her son had walked by, and the little boy had stopped and stared longingly at the horse.
My mom’s world was turned upside down when she lost the father she adored at 12, so she had a soft spot for children who hurt. On a police widow’s pension, she was always mailing a few dollars off to St. Jude’s or to children she had read about who were hungry or needed an operation.
When she told me that she had given my horse to another child — a stranger — I was crushed. Whenever we fought for the next 16 years, I reminded her of her perfidy.
On my 21st birthday, I came home to find a bouncing horse with a handwritten sign in its mouth. “Hi. I’m back!” It was signed: “Trigger.”
I brought the horse of a different era to live with me, as a rebuke about how long it took me to appreciate one of my mom’s favorite sayings: “Don’t cry over things that can’t cry over you.”
Her lesson was lovely: that materialism and narcissism can only smother life — and Christmas — if you let them.
In a piece reprinted in the Kennedy anthology, Henry van Dyke writes: “Are you willing ... to own, that probably the only good reason for your existence is not what you are going to get out of life, but what you are going to give to life; to close your book of complaints against the management of the universe and look around you for a place where you can sow a few seeds of happiness ... to make a grave for your ugly thoughts and a garden for your kindly feelings ...? Then you can keep Christmas.”
~Maureen Dowd/ Dec. 26, 2007
Okay readers...time to consider which of 4 worldviews fits best. Your choices are the following...and can also be found in a poll to the right. (Note - After the poll closed, the votes were included below in percentages. Thank you for voting!)
1.Honor your mother. (0%)
2.I sit in judgment. (55%)
3.Don't bet on a wooden horse. (22%)
4.I deserve too much. (22%)
One morning, I came down to the porch and the horse was gone. My mom explained that a poor woman and her son had walked by, and the little boy had stopped and stared longingly at the horse.
My mom’s world was turned upside down when she lost the father she adored at 12, so she had a soft spot for children who hurt. On a police widow’s pension, she was always mailing a few dollars off to St. Jude’s or to children she had read about who were hungry or needed an operation.
When she told me that she had given my horse to another child — a stranger — I was crushed. Whenever we fought for the next 16 years, I reminded her of her perfidy.
On my 21st birthday, I came home to find a bouncing horse with a handwritten sign in its mouth. “Hi. I’m back!” It was signed: “Trigger.”
I brought the horse of a different era to live with me, as a rebuke about how long it took me to appreciate one of my mom’s favorite sayings: “Don’t cry over things that can’t cry over you.”
Her lesson was lovely: that materialism and narcissism can only smother life — and Christmas — if you let them.
In a piece reprinted in the Kennedy anthology, Henry van Dyke writes: “Are you willing ... to own, that probably the only good reason for your existence is not what you are going to get out of life, but what you are going to give to life; to close your book of complaints against the management of the universe and look around you for a place where you can sow a few seeds of happiness ... to make a grave for your ugly thoughts and a garden for your kindly feelings ...? Then you can keep Christmas.”
~Maureen Dowd/ Dec. 26, 2007
Okay readers...time to consider which of 4 worldviews fits best. Your choices are the following...and can also be found in a poll to the right. (Note - After the poll closed, the votes were included below in percentages. Thank you for voting!)
1.Honor your mother. (0%)
2.I sit in judgment. (55%)
3.Don't bet on a wooden horse. (22%)
4.I deserve too much. (22%)
8 comments:
I'm guessing "I sit in judgement" because, as a columnist, that's what Maureen Dowd DOES!
I had the same thought Nienna had, but voted for the "don't bet on a wooden horse", the wooden horse being a metaphor for all things that can't love you back.
On the other hand (I bet that's my worldview--that there is always another side to the story! I live in a world of ambivalence.), by her own admission, she did judge her mother for 16 years for giving the horse away.
nienna...I just have one thing to say...
Hmmmmmm.
annie...
oh, yeah...that
I voted on I deserve too much. Sometimes I hesitate to post what I think, but here goes. Maureen's mother in my opinion was cruel. To take a child's toy and give to a perfect stranger without her knowledge and then 16 years later give her another one. And mind you not one thrown in a corner but one she loved and played with every day. I know I know, the stranger was poor and Maureen's mother had a soft spot but am I reading this wrong? I don't get the message. And then don't cry over things that can't cry over you, what is that all about? I've cried over a lot of things that didn't cry over me. And glad I did.
I really didn't see the lovely lesson in all of this but then again I could be reading it from a different seat in the room.
But the entire thing just sounded like horse poop to me.
Jenny,
The response will be entitled "Horse Sense or Horse
Poop"...I just got ahead of myself. If you haven't yet read Maureen Dowd's column in the NYTimes, please google her and read at least two columns before my response goes up....think you will find her writing intersting... in light of her early memory...and especially given your comment.
I voted "don't bet on a wooden horse" for her current worldview. I agree that it's a metaphor for materialism leading to emptiness. It seems like she matured and learned from her mother's philosophy on life.
Post a Comment