Community
Allright, I’m going to write a post that has almost nothing to do with sustainability, except for the aspect of community. Pardon the disruption from your regularly scheduled programming, but this is really important to me. First, you should know that my family was not the nicest family in the world. Far from it; we were so dysfunctional (in addition to being really poor) that we made the Simpsons look normal. I never had a birthday party growing up. Not even a cake or presents or anything like that. It wasn’t because we were too poor; my brothers all had those things. It was because I was a girl and not worth such things. As I said, my family wasn’t very nice.
Today is my birthday. Tuesday I had my first ever birthday party. It was thrown by my grandmother. You have to understand also that she is not my “real” grandmother. There is no blood between us. This started out by me helping her out when she needed it, and gradually we adopted each other. And Tuesday she threw me a surprise party. Complete with food, cake, and many of my friends.
THAT’S the power of community.
Labels: community, sustainability
posted by RAS at 8:20 AM
5 Comments:
good story, and happy birthday!
Happy Birthday
Wow, how sweet! Maybe "real" family has a way of finding us.
Happy belated birthday. And I wouldn't agree that your post has almost nothing to do with sustainability. If anything I think a huge part of sustainable living is accepting the idea into your whole life and not just growing a few vegetables and turning the lights off when we leave the room (exaggeration to make the point, hope you understand what I mean). The people around us are a massive part of our environment and yet too many people don't see the environment as anything more than the physcial landscape.
From Belgium
Congratulations on a somewhat belated birthday. It is truly said that you can choose your friends but not your relatives and now you have experienced what true friendship is. I am happy for you.
Did you know that you share your birthday with the British Empire or at least the 24 May was the day chosen as a day to celebrate the Empire? In the days when we had an empire and I was an infant at school, the kids would be marched around the school hall singing jingoistic songs and waving union jacks. Why have you just brought all this back to me? Because you and the British Empire share the same birthday as my old dad (now as long gone as the Empire) and when I was young enough to believe such things I was told by my mother that all the shops and public buildings were putting the flags out for my dad’s birthday. That was the nice part of it. As for the rest, well, sometimes it is just good to be American.
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