How do you define who you are and what you do?
Recently I told my 7-year-old grandson that I won’t get to see him next week because I’ll be away on business. Henry knows I often travel. But the business part pricked up his ears.
“Why, Nana? Can’t you write your column at your house?”
Henry is smart. He knows I write a newspaper column each week. I’ve read a few of them to him and he generally approves. He especially likes the ones about him and his cousins.
“I’m not writing on this trip,” I said. “I’m speaking. It’s part of my job. I go places to talk and people buy tickets to hear me.”
He looked at me the way he did the day I told him that once, while swimming in the ocean, I was circled by a shark.
“What do you talk about?”
“I tell stories, like the ones about you and your cousins.”
“Seriously? People pay money to hear you tell those stories?”
“Seriously,” I said.
We fell silent, thinking about that. Finally, Henry sighed.
“Well, Nana,” he said, laughing, “that’s just crazy!”
“Yes,” I said, “it is. But let’s not tell anybody, OK?”
For many years, my children knew me only as their mother. And rightly so. It was the most important, most demanding, most rewarding job of my life. And it was what I wanted to do.
My mother, like so many women, needed a paying job to make ends meet. She worked as a waitress and a millhand to put cornbread on our table and second-hand shoes on our feet. I was proud of all she did. But I loved her for being my mother.
The best eulogy is never a job description. It’s a celebration of the reasons why the departed was loved and the ways they made the world a better place.
My children lost their father to cancer when they were just becoming adults. They admired him enormously as a teacher and a coach. But they loved him most, and remember him best, simply for being their dad.
Years later, I married my former editor and friend. I like him a lot. But I love him for his kindness and how he makes me laugh; for the dad/stepdad he is to our kids; and the grandpa he is to our grandkids. He makes our world a better place.
He’s retired now, but still hears from former co-workers who liked him as an editor, but love him as a friend.
Often, we are defined by our work. Not by the job, but how we treat people we work with and deal with along the way.
I’m thankful for my paying job. Henry is right. It’s crazy, even if it keeps me sane.
But I’d like to be known to my family and friends (and myself) for the reasons that they love me and the ways I try to make their world a better place, things seldom seen on a resume.
Sharon Randall can be reached at P.O. Box 416, Pacific Grove CA 93950 or on her website: www.sharonrandall.com.
