TJ Hirst

My Daily Question: Have I seen the hand of God reaching out to touch us today?

Today, I had an unfortunate post office experience. I complained.

I had purchased a roll of 100 stamps three days before the price was increased from $0.41 to $0.42. No sign was posted announcing the change that was only days away. Nor did the sales clerk communicate it to me when I asked for this large quantity of stamps. On the morning of the change when I heard of the price increase on NPR news, I seethed. I knew it was only $1 extra for all of those stamps, but they were worthless three days after I bought them without that extra one cent stamp that I now had to return to purchase.

When I went to the post office I told them of my complaint, which was primarily that no one communicated the price increase with words or with a sign. I didn’t think I was rude; I just expressed that I was a little “perturbed.”

The clerk, whom normally has a smile and a joke for everyone, put me in my place with his ultra polite, “Well, it has been difficult for all of us.”

But it didn’t feel like he understood me or even acknowledged my concern. So I upped my emotion. Then he said things like, “You asked a question, can I have a chance to talk, now?” I felt my confidence diminish that I had even stood up to speak.

KH and NH stood beside me during this attempt to express myself. Later when I asked KH about it, she admitted it was a bad scene. “A little embarrassing,” she said. “And your voice was shaking.”

So I wondered, how else was I supposed to handle it? Not saying anything? Act as if it doesn’t matter? I am opinionated, and sometimes I have a hard time knowing when I need to step up and say something and when I don’t.

But the good news is that I am mentoring my own daughter to know how. She received a late slip from the public library for a book she thought she had returned. Apparently she didn’t. She looked for the book everywhere at home. She even stayed after school to clean out her locker just too find it, but still no book. It was lost.

She stressed over it for many weeks. Every time she wanted to check out a book at the library, the outstanding fee prevented it and reminded her of the loss.

She waited until the end of the year to pay the $25 for the lost book and the $5 late fee thinking that maybe it could still show up. For a 14-year-old that is a high price to pay for a book that you won’t even get to read again.

This morning, she moaned about the “consequence” for losing the book and insisted that she had learned her lesson to be more careful. She resolved to pay it with her own money.

At the library, she paid her fee. After, I found her in the young adult stacks. She pulled out a book. “This is the book I paid for.”

“You mean you think it is the actual book that you checked out?” I said.

She hemmed and hawed, not wanting to commit. She explained something about the computer listing only one copy at our library, and that it was lost and paid for, but she said, “This must be from one of the other libraries.”

She hesitated as if she didn’t really believe that, so I pressed her. “Do you think that is the same book you checked out?”

She wasn’t completely sure, but I could tell she felt something growing inside of her. I encouraged her to trust her feeling and tell the librarians.

I sat on a bench with my other children and watched her in action. She took her concern to the front desk. She handed them the book and said she thought this was the book she just paid for.

They checked the barcode. Indeed it was. She had paid for a book that was sitting on the shelf the whole time she was stressing about it. They acknowledged that they should have looked on the shelf first. Two librarians thanked her for coming to tell them, which built her confidence in speaking up.

What a genuine learning experience in so many ways! Why couldn’t my “speaking up” at the post office have looked this good?

Try-It With-Me Tuesday, an interactive weekly time and place to foster connections that challenge and encourage the process to become a well-rounded person.

When I committed to the May Reading Challenge to read to or with someone, I wanted an unexpected opportunity to present itself. I waited. I trusted that such an opportunity would come and I would see it. I waited. I wondered. I made an alternate plan to pursue something else. But close to my deadline, it happened!

First, some background. Last year I read the Twilight series by Stephanie Meyer. When my daughter turned 14, I encouraged her to expand her reading genres and try these. Yet, I knew they were a little more mature and wanted to talk about some of the scenes and themes with her.

After she finished Twilight in two days, she started New Moon. She admitted they were better than she expected. Although I wanted her to slow down and let us talk about them, she is quick and not a big talker. Me—I’m a BIG talker; yet, she was plowing through them and wasn’t pausing for communication.

Until . . .

Sickness sidelined her unexpectedly on a school day, and I saw the opportunity. I rearranged my plans for the day. We settled into the couches where I read a chapter of New Moon to her. While she was a bit frustrated by the slower pace of listening, it did open her up to discuss the series. We engaged in some interesting conversation. And that was my goal!

Even as she returned to her book alone, I picked up my book, Watership Down, and we read for a couple of hours on the couch together. Interestingly, that opportunity opened my thinking about a plan to extend this challenge throughout the summer.

I thought my days of reading aloud with my children were over. They are becoming increasingly more independent and mature. But this summer may just be our window of opportunity to try one more read-aloud book together. And after finishing Watership Down, that might just be the right one. Or do you have some suggestions for a read-aloud with ages ranging from 9-14?

Did you read to or with someone this month? What benefits do you see from reading together? Tell me about it in the comments below or send me a link to your own post about it.

Join in by trying the challenges with me, commenting, linking, or suggesting a challenge. If you want to write a post on your blog about what happened when you took the challenge, I will publish your link. Just link to my website in your post and send me your link. Feel free to use the TIWMT image in your post.

The discussion of the May Selection for the Bodacious Bloggity Book Club is starting. I’m a day early with my post, but I’ve already planned my Sunday post on another topic. After you’ve read my review of Watership Down by Richard Adams and you want to follow the discussion, visit Marathon Bird on May 25 and check out the other links.

First of all, I know there is a word for animals that are given human characteristics—yes, I am right, anthropomorphism. I typically detest that sort of book or movie and feel it is the bane of parenthood to be subjected to them. But, I took a chance by remaining open to suggestion, and It was worth it.

I am not sure if this is a true example of anthropomorphism or just a creative interpretation of how a warren of rabbits may actually live. Adams was not overtly saying, “Here is a human disguised as a rabbit.” And that is why I think this book was not only tolerable but struck me with great curiosity.

Whatever the author’s intended approach or form, I recognized numerous examples that showed similarities between the personalities of the rabbit characters and human personalities.

Identifying each rabbit’s personality and then observing how it fit into the group showed a theme of governance and individual agency. Leadership that allows for individual ownership and participation by making choices and acting upon responsibility increases the growth and survival of the whole group. On the other hand, dependence upon others takes away the opportunity and the capacity to make decisions and stifles growth.

The leader of the main group of rabbits in this story follows the first philosophy of leadership as they encounter the other types of leaders and groups. As such a leader, he even extends freedom to other animals, recognizing and using their traits in exchange for protection or service. Hazel, who becomes the Chief Rabbit of stragglers escaping a doomed warren, said, “If anyone finds an animal or bird that isn’t an enemy, in need of help, for goodness sake, don’t miss the opportunity. That would be like leaving carrots to rot in the ground.”

When they come across some hutch rabbits on a farm, they learn quickly that captivity destroys not only the use of agency to make choices but diminishes the ability to develop the reasoning to do so. Describing some hutch rabbits that the wild rabbits turned loose, “They did not know how to make up their minds. It was not within their capacity to take a decision and act on it. These rabbits had never had to act to save their lives or even find a meal.” Self-reliance encourages long-term survival.

Of all the characters, my two favorite personalities are Fiver and Big Wig.

As a sensitive soul myself, I adore Fiver, the small rabbit who can sense danger or wrong choices. He is the one who insisted on leaving the doomed warren in the first place. At first, the others doubt his ability to see and listen to the signs around them, but he has a gift that through several experiences is proved invaluable.

Big Wig is a tough but smart fighter who does not shirk from a difficult task. About him Hazel predicted in the beginning, “He was certainly no coward, but he was likely to remain steady as long as he could see his way clear and be sure what to do. To him, perplexity was worse than danger.” These were true statements, but Big Wig learned to not only face danger but to also make decisions in the midst of it.

These characters and all of the others are leaders in one way or another as they use and develop their particular gifts to benefit all. Their struggles to create a warren of their own, protect it against their enemies and help it flourish with buck, does and kittens is an apt analogy for our own life experience as families, communities and nations.

I am surprised that I liked it and admitted that to my daughter’s 3rd grade teacher who saw me carrying it at a classroom performance. She said, “I used it as a read-aloud with my kids—my own kids at home, not my classroom students.”

Intrigued, she gave me an idea of how to extend my May Reading Challenge in a summer read-aloud of Watership Down with my children.

This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein: for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success.

Joshua 1:8

My daughter’s eighth grade English class has been reading To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, and it is the April selection for the Bodacious Bloggity Book Club hosted by Marathon Bird.

I hoped reading it together would prompt conversation with her. Even though my daughter is now my height and the story brought us into the same frame of reference, we were still looking through the window of those words from our own places. She is experiencing this story for the first time. I am relearning and refining.

The first time I read To Kill A Mockingbird is the first time I understood the power of perspective. In the concluding scene the main character, a young girl named Scout, recognizes her change of perspective:

Atticus was right. One time he said you never really know a man until you stand in his shoes and walk around in them. Just standing on the Radley porch was enough.

I occasionally stand on my neighbor’s front porch to try this exercise. That change of perspective certainly reveals the weaknesses and uncovers the strengths of my own home.

Now, I am reading this book again with parent eyes, with added experience and adult-like assumptions.I am not nearly as fresh. And neither is my perspective.

But only in this place could I discover something new.

Harper Lee’s did not choose Scout to tell the story of misunderstood Arthur “Boo” Radley and maligned Tom Robinson so that younger readers in high school literature discussions could relate to her.

Instead, I believe Lee gave us this story through the young eyes of Scout to replace our tired adult perspectives. In this way, she could strip the prejudice of experience and offer the opportunity to relearn like a child.

Scout’s childhood perceptions aren’t innocent. In fact, as her brother Jem said, it was when they were trying to get their reclusive neighbor, Boo, to come out of his house that this story of overcoming prejudice begins. They think he is quirky and weird, and he is.

But Scout and Jem have to go through the miserable punishment of reading to Mrs Dubose every day for ruining her shrubs and the horrific racial injustices in their community before they prepared to meet and accept the real Boo Radley.

I want to parent like Atticus. He seems like the kind of father that teaches by example rather than always trying to teach with his mouth. For example, in the process of guiding Jem through his punishment with Mrs. Dubose he shows his children how to love someone who is hard to like. Atticus overlooks her flaws and discovers what is majestic about her—her bravery to overcome an addiction.

I teach with my mouth because I like words. As a family we recently watched the movie Amazing Grace (read my review of that here). When my daughter and I considered the impact of that movie on reading this book and what our own prejudices might be against African Americans, it was she who taught me. She said, “It was like when slavery ended, it didn’t end.”

Ironically, it is in the dim light of Jem’s room when Scout finally meets Boo and comes to her own understanding.

They were white hands that had never seen the sun, so white they stood out garishly against the dull cream wall in the dim light of Jem’s room. His face was as white as his hands.

It took her describing him as the individual he really was, not just a creation in her mind for her to see him and know who he is. Later she says,

I wondered why Atticus was inviting us to the front porch instead of the living room, then I understood. The living room lights were awfully strong.

Boo is sensitive to light. This brings this story to a symbolic conclusion for me. While light makes it possible for us to see, being sensitive to that light helps us to not only see but to perceive slight attitudes, feeling and circumstances of others.