beenie

Baby's First Book

I bought this book a few years ago for a child who still doesn't exist... my own. I want to teach my child/children something my parents never fully outright taught me, in word or in example... never take more than you give back.

I don't want to sound like my parents are greedy, selfish people, because they're not. Not deliberately. I never really saw them "take," in the real sense of the word, but I never really saw much "giving back," either. We went to other people's houses every once in a while, but it was rare that someone was invited into our home. When I would go somewhere with friends, it was always the friends' parents who drove... never mine. I slept over friends' houses, but was never allowed to host my own sleepover. When I was in junior high, my best friend, H, attempted suicide and spent a couple of weeks in a mental hospital - my father wouldn't bring me to see her (something about the hospital being too far away, as I recall), and the father of one of my other friends - a friend who didn't know H from a hole in the wall - stepped up in a heartbeat. Just little things like that. I've never known whether it was because they didn't want to be bothered, whether they didn't want to deal with other people's kids for whatever reason (part of me wonders whether my dad ever really wanted kids in the first place), or because they just didn't think to reciprocate.

I want my child to know that's not okay. I hope to be able to teach them by example. We love to do things with and for our friends. Before we moved, we hosted a weekly open house every Friday night for over 3 years. Whenever we go camping, Bryan takes it upon himself to make sure we have enough food and supplies in case others don't have enough. We've babysat for friends in need on a moment's notice. And we've just been given the greatest honor I believe a friend can give to another friend - we've been asked if we would be the guardians to our friends' newborn in case anything ever happened to them. My parents just don't have that kind of friendship in their lives. I don't know what I'd do without it.

I'd like to think that we've done a pretty good job of sowing the seeds of good friendship, and that we're beginning to reap the benefits. That's not to say that reaping the benefits is the reason we try to be good friends, good people in general, but it's nice to know that we have people we can trust in a crisis, people who sometimes know more about us than our own families do, who won't judge as much as family sometimes can, people we would trust with the lives of our future kids, and who trust us with the lives of theirs. I'm so blessed and lucky to say that we have many such people in our lives.

I'm not saying that to toot my own horn. I'm not always the greatest at giving more than I take. I can be a very petty, jealous and selfish person, and once the kidlets start coming, I want to make sure that I can tone it down. While we've been good at friendship with some people, we've not always tried our best or hardest with others, and I regret that. I want to make sure that the petty, selfish, jealous, "bad friend" part of me never has the opportunity to come into stark relief compared to whatever good qualities I possess.

Which is why I love the message of this book. Maybe it's just as much for me as it is for the future baby.

Posted by beenie at March 7, 2006 02:32 PM