Hand-me-downs

Size did not matter in the first grade.  My classmates and I were diminutive, and our world was as small as we were.  The boundaries were limited by what we could see and hear.

By the third grade, however, the universe was expanding in so many ways.  At the Christmas gift exchange I received a genuine, plastic-handled, toy derringer and fell in love with the girl who gave it to me.  First love is not always eternal.   Mine lasted until lunch when I bought a fudge bar for myself and not her.

That same year I discovered heroes outside my family.  Hours were spent drawing a picture of John F. Kennedy on a cardboard canvas that had been cut from a box.  Baseball introduced Ernie Banks and Hank Aaron and Frank Robinson. And, television added Wilbur Snyder, the scientific wrestler.

Suddenly there was an intense hunger for history and legends and myths.  When my parents finally sat down for the evening news, I occasionally put aside the comic or the encyclopedia and listened. There was so much to contemplate.

In those days my desire for knowledge was more than matched by my appetite for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and extra helpings of mashed potatoes and gravy at the supper table. Maybe it was the diet that caused my waistline to grow.

As the oldest son and the widest of the cousins, I never had hand-me-downs.  I was pleasingly plump, not prideful.  No one else wore the husky-sized jeans.  Oh, they were like other pants, just bigger around.  They had the same brass buttons on the pockets, the ones that heated up when your back was to the fireplace and branded your behind when you stepped away.

Sixty years later I sometimes revisit the “I never had hand-me-downs” and have come to acknowledge it as a naive overstatement. For too long in life I may have been blinder than I was wide.  Now I humbly accept that my greatest rewards have often been hand-me-downs.

My parents were tireless.  A daily lesson in work ethics was taught by example.  Without an alarm clock Mom was up before Dad preparing for the day.  She cooked, cleaned, sewed, and bandaged her household.  Dad came home from the factory and fixed what needed fixed, worked outside, and raised a garden. And they both cared for relatives and neighbors all their lives.

Mom read to her children daily.  In our youth it was children’s stories from a red, hardback book or Bible tales.  I absorbed her need to turn a page and wander beyond my own little corner of my own little house. Paperback pilgrimages encouraged exploration, empathy, and aspirations.

Erma Bombeck once said, “I come from a family where gravy is considered a beverage.”  Now that is not completely true of the Perkinson or Petty clans, but we do come from families that gather. Sunday dinners required no invitation.  Places to sit were plentiful. Reunions and holidays and lives were celebrated passionately, and love was unconditional.

This Christmas season I question if I have effectively matched the hand-me-down contributions my parents offered.  Love of family. Spiritual curiosity.  Work ethics.  A desire to learn.  A willingness to help.  That’s just the short list and a challenge. You might have a similar list.

These gifts were rarely new when our family and coaches and teachers and neighbors received them. They were not wrapped when passed on to sons and daughters and to men and women. We found them through experience and interaction. They were not placed under a festive evergreen.

Hopefully we recognize the value of our own life lessons. We need to model the actions we honor and hope for in other. Our hand-me-down stories and attitudes and treasures are worth sharing.