Monday, 06JUL09 The Creation of Pollyanna

     Please, allow me to apologize right from the start. I have a feeling that this blog will be a tad sappy.  Ah well, Y'all know me already. I can tend toward sentimentality, yeah? I'm writing this blog because some tiny, little thing happened this weekend that made me so happy. Seriously, a tiny, tiny little thing.

    I guess I should preface the tiny, little thing with some background facts. I took a road trip this weekend. I shouldn't have because I had a paper due Monday--from which I just received the grade and it isn't a very good one. I should have stayed home and worked diligently on the paper the entire weekend, but I'd already made plans to take this road trip MONTHS ago, so I felt I needed to go. And, in my own defense, I did make it a one-day trip instead of the three-day trip it was intended to be.

    So, it began how I like every trip to begin--in the dark! I love beginning a trip whilst it is still dark outside cos I really like watching the sun come up. It just makes me happy. There is--as I've said, perhaps a million times--something encouraging about watching the sun come up.  The trip, which included a thirty-five minute stop for breakfast, took four hours and eleven minutes. I listened to a story on CD and 3 informational CDs on health most of the trip and then--when we got closer to DFW--I listened to KLUV which is the Dallas Oldies station, and one of my favorite radio stations ON THE PLANET!

    Most of the group I was meeting for an event was heading to the nature museum after lunch, but I'd decided to find a place with wi-fi and try to work on my paper. I found myself  heading over to Mom and Daddy's house cos I knew they had wi-fi and I wanted to see them. I was in luck! They were home.

    I spent the next three hours with them. We chatted and Daddy worked on my computer. It was a very  nice time. In reality, it was even nicer because I got to spend time with them and JUST ME. With three siblings and a niece who often share my time with them, these moments when I get them to myself are very, very special to me.  I had some time with both of them alone, too. Time with Daddy is even rarer, so Saturday was extra special because I had ten or fifteen minutes with him down in the office.

    Now, all the background information is out there. On to what made this trip extra special.  Daddy and I were talking about a class I'm taking. Early in the semester, the class had been discussing Emerson's transcendental ideas. One of them was that--in transcendentalism--if a person does what is best for himself then he is doing what is best for everyone. He makes the world and society a better place when he makes it better for himself--because each man in every man. (I should note here that I might have misunderstood this idea. I've done it before, but I think that is what Emerson thought.)

    I had balked at this idea from the beginning. That just didn't seem right!  Surely, thinking of others before yourself as often as you can is more correct, yeah?  Surely, being selfless and taking care of someone else is more important than making sure the world makes YOU happy, isn't it? The idea that someone would think the opposite was true seemed astonishing to me. I was expressing my ideas about it to Daddy and when I finished, I said, "But you prolly already knew that, didn't ya, Daddy?"  He smiled at me and said with a tone that sounded both affectionate and proud, "Not my Pollyanna."

    My heart just filled up, ya know? I am aware that my gregarious, never-meet-a-stranger, open personality is not my Daddy's favorite kind of personality.  I know he loves me in spite of it. But, at that moment, when it was evident that this part of me--this inherent and essential part of me--was something that made him smile at me in a genuine way; I felt so worthwhile and special.  I have found myself smiling numerous times over the last several days remembering it and knowing that I am loved by my Daddy.

    

Daddy and I sometime in 2008, I believe. This was the first photo I took from my webcam.