By George E. Pence III–
Something we own, is it truly ours? Something we give away, was it ever truly ours to give?
I am on the sunny side of seventy, if the sun radiating from my birth still casts enough light to be called “sunny.” Some years ago, and after decades of being single, I was rewarded with a wonderful wife. That reward includes two sons, a daughter, her daughter’s husband and three grandchildren (not to mention the cast of extraneous characters that decorate any large Italian family.)
In short order I assumed my place in this new solar system. I felt the tug of gravity and made allowances for it, just as other members of this solar system made allowances for me. I had a place, an orbit, even if other members of this solar system had a history and a geology with which I was not fully familiar.
In that circumstance there is an odd phase of beginning to love people who are still something of a mystery.
And so, one day I took my place in the back seat of my stepson’s SUV – a rather nice, late model Jeep. Matt is a teacher at a small parochial school in Oregon, so there was, for me, a sense of not knowing him as well as I knew his brother and sister… both of whom live locally.
Looking for something to advance our acquaintance, I mentioned that I liked his Jeep. “Thank you,” he said, “my sister gave it to me.”
“Really?” I responded, taken aback by the generosity of the gesture.
“Yes,” Gia interjected in a tone meant to relieve my surprise, “It’s what brothers and sisters do for each other. He needed it more than I did.”
“She’s right,” Matthew smiled, “I did.”
I really didn’t know where to go from there. Could I imagine myself making that same calculus and giving my car to my sister, simply because she needed it more than I did?
There is a short answer to that question. That short answer is, “No.”
I felt as if I was in a moral context for which I had no preparation… no personal experience. Should I say something insincere like, “Of course, I understand.” Or should I expose my own tiny definition of family and generosity and say, “You did what, Gia? A car? Did I get that right?”
And so, I did about what you might expect. I said nothing. The conversation stalled. My place in the back seat was suddenly occupied by someone half the size of the person who had been sitting there only a moment before.
I doubt my discomfiture was a secret to anyone in the car… but it was especially obvious to my wife. When our excursion was over, Glenda told me that she had given the Jeep to Gia before Gia had passed it along to Matt.
I’m sure she meant that fact to put me at ease and describe a circumstance that was more relatable to someone like me. There was a brief feeling of reassurance. Maybe my own definitions of family and generosity were not so anemic after all.
Then I asked her, “But what did Gia do for a car after that?”
“Oh, she bought her next Jeep. Gia really likes those Jeeps. And once she moved back downstairs the payments weren’t that much of a burden.”
My roller coaster of self-affirmation hit another down slope.
“I give,” I said in pathetic surrender.
Much time has now passed, and my reeducation in the definition of family has proceeded apace. What was then a speed bump of incredulity, now seems more like a gesture to be expected.
However, more recently I’ve begun to think of that experience in a different and much larger context. What is meant for all of us by that passage from the Gospel according to Gia… “It’s what brothers and sisters do for each other. He needed it more than I did.”
All of us come into this world minus any investment on our part. We did nothing to merit our creation. All of us are like Gia in that way… we have everything standing in our shoes simply because someone loved us. Everything that comes to us has come to us for that very same reason. Not one atom is here because of what we did, and not one atom will disappear without us.
Yet, how quickly we take ownership for all that we are given. The claim to this hand being my hand, this eye being my eye, this tongue being my tongue is specious enough, but how much less appropriate to think in terms of my house, my phone… or even my car.
