val·ue
–noun
1.
2.
monetary or material worth, as in commerce or trade: Thispiece of land has greatly increased in value.
3.
the worth of something in terms of the amount of otherthings for which it can be exchanged or in terms of somemedium of exchange.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/value
Costa Rica
CR Outhouse
This year I made my third trip to Costa Rica. A couple of friends from the shop wanted to go but hadn't been before. They wanted a tour guide. I loved Costa Rica and quickly volunteered my services. During this trip I hit the metaphoric crossroads. I realized how rich I had become. It happened so smoothly over the years that I didn't even notice the changes. The more I was around third-world people the more complex my world looked. I had so much stuff, and!, my kids had even more.
The Ticos are a happy and generous people even in their poverty. This was what I wanted my kids to know. I wanted to teach them to respect every economic situation and learn how to grow from and with it. But mostly, I wanted them to learn tolerance, (except to assholes). I decided I never wanted to be so rich that I forgot what's important in life....like respect. However, the truth was, I never had so much money before, and it had changed me.
Hot Wax
This year we had our first break-ins; it happened twice in one week by the same person. A young skater kid who lived in an apartment complex behind the shop took his BB gun to one of our windows and shattered a hole big enough to grab 8 pairs of shoes. It wasn't an easy task for him either because the glass was thick tempered two pane tinted glass. He broke his BB gun into pieces trying to get he hole big enough to reach in and grab shoe boxes. We found the shattered gun in the parking lot. A friend of ours told us who did it, and after he did it again through our window's quick-fix, we sent the police after him. They found the shoes in his closet. Nothing ever happened to the skater, in fact, he became a pro. I got so pissed! We put cameras up around the place after that. By this time I was over the ego-centric part of the surfing industry.
Trade shows were full of retail madness too. Personally, I believed the soul of surfing went underground so surfing commerce could take over. The surf industry was becoming a world commodity in a time when people were spending all kinds of money to own brand-name everything. With the sport being categorized as extreme, its industry suddenly became a money driven market holding its own on Wall St. The shows became more and more about pros and egos then the simple life of surfing with the bros. I have to admit though...a lot of the money surf companies were getting was going towards the discovery of waves. Traveling to the perfect peak or point break became the dream of every surfer. And we all saw the waves in the ads.
At 35 I started making a personal check-list, much like one does at 17 and 25. It was one of those heavy-headed moments when we face the cusp of another coming of age metamorphose. It's a time of reflection mixed with anticipation; the reality of who you think you are, what you obviously do, mixed with the dreams you still have for yourself layered with the changes you want to make. The truth was, at 35, I was flying high and fast....straight into my mid-life crises. Mentally, I found myself categorizing the pros and cons of my life. The fact that I was now rich made the list complicated. The Bible is very clear about one's love towards money, but, I couldn't help liking very much the freedom money can give.
PRO: Mark liked buying me jewelry. I had bling-bling diamonds on my fingers and studded blings in my ears. They were the envy of all our southern friends. CON: Sometimes I forgot to take all the bling off when I went surfing and I'd lose a lot of it in the impact zone. There are a lot of fish (or mermaids) sporting high dollar diamond studded earrings! PRO: Hot Wax had our whole family in fashion forward clothes. CON: People wanted mine and my kids discarded cloths so much I had lists. It was kind of odd. PRO: I was traveling two to three times a year, Cape Hatteras, Snowshoe Mountain, AND some foreign country for surf. CON: I fell in love with the simple life vacations remind you of. Having so many things meant I had to keep up with them. And, I started hating thieves so much I'd get paranoid. The Bible talks about this side effect. PRO: The kids had a private school education and were spending summers in California. CON: I didn't want them to become snobs. PRO: Mark and I had duel sport motorcycles, and, I could afford the best softball bat available in retail. CON: There isn't any. Having good toys is never a con.
Yeah, I was rich! Mark once asked me how I felt about being able to buy anything I wanted. I told him it felt fine, but personally, I liked that money took care of all the tickets in my life; lift tickets, plane tickets, and speeding tickets.
PRO: the toys!
CON: With all my jewelry people treated me like I was a snob the minute I'd walk though a door, and that was odd to me. I didn't like being thought of in that way. I don't like envy. I pictured myself at fifty turning into a high-brow. The truth was my soul was far too much of a So. Cal. Hippie to be turned into an aristocrat but hey, money is power right? A war complete with heavy arsenal on both sides had started inside of me.
Mark and I clashed here. He liked being looked at as rich. He like the power it gave him with people. I didn't. To me it disconnected people. I hated all the assumptions they made about us not deserving our wealth. For some reason they didn't think we earned it....like it was given to us and we didn't deserve the Gift, and, that we should give our money away....many of our friends became takers. This didn't help my Value crises.
I quietly sought out diverse categories of friends. I was searching for the ones who shared my quest for definitions more than my sport affiliations. Friends who were somehow connected with my impending mid-life forecast of holding steady to my bourgeois comfort zone. I found the task was easy with my kids around. They didn't surf, weren't overly religious, and were very smart. I also found my kids interesting people. They would say and do things that got my attention like a shinny object. They didn't care about money like most kids and rarely asked for anything. They liked shopping at second-hand stores and they never, ever asked for something from a company vender or surf rep. I was always impressed with that. And I wanted those values to remain with them. But we were rich!
Shaun at 13
Even though Shaun was working in the shop after school he never became a surfer, nor did Sarah. They were heading towards the Drama life. After home-schooling, both kids went into our church's private school. When Shaun reached middle school we put him in the public system. Within the year he was dying his hair green and playing the guitar. Even Sarah started dying her hair...she was only in the forth grade. Eye-brows started to rise amongst the church members concerning our family. Personally, the free-spirit within me got excited when I saw my kids becoming themselves. I set my sights on helping them all I could. I studied psychology, philosophy and personality distinctions so I could understand diversity. Mark saw the whole hair color thing as stupid. He wished I didn't encourage it. Both my Mom and Mother-in-law agreed. I concluded that when it came to raising teens like ours, hair-color was the least of our battles.
My studies helped me with disciplining. Shaun was an easy child to raise. He was quiet and compliant. His real mischief didn't happen until he graduated and moved out of the house. I did however have to give him a few smacks with a belt when he was younger. My rule was, if my kids rebelled I'd give them the same amount of whacks as their age. At ten Shaun got his last 10-wack spanking. Sarah however, was a little more difficult.
Sarah at 9
Spanking her was like adding lighter fluid to a book of burning matches. She had the will of a tiger, and she was defiant. Disciplining defiance takes planning. One day I got a phone call from Sarah's teacher. She told me Sarah had forged my signature on her homework. Both my kids were excellent students and I never really worried about their homework, (homeschooling taught both of them how to work on their own). I was perplexed on what to do with this new issue. I went back to my favorite parenting book...
Making Children Mind Without Losing Yours [Paperback]
Kevin; Baker Book House Fleming H Revell Co Leman (Author)...and I tried something radical. Leman calls it Reality Discipline. The concept is, if you don't want your kids doing something at 2 don't let them do it at 1...if you don't want them doing something at 16 don't let them do it at 12....etc. I took Sarah to our local detention center and had her look at the prisoners. "Some of these guys forged someone's name," I told her, "do you want to live here?" I asked her at 9. She got the point.
Although Sarah was still having fits of rage she was actually very compliant. If she had room to be creative and believed the person asking her to do something was not selfish in motives, she'd do it. But no one could ever micro-manage her. She had to have room to perform between her restricted walls. Mark liked micro-managing. It created an outburst between them. These outbursts were destructive in a lot of ways. They'd send Sarah into a lit match-book frenzy and Mark would turn into antagonizing lighter fluid. I would leave when the yelling started. I didn't want to be accused of choosing a side in a battle I didn't always agree should be happening.
God gave me an interesting way of putting my foot down when my kids fought for something they both wanted like, to sit in the front seat. Shaun was born on the 15th. That's an odd number. Sarah was born on the 22 which is even. If they both wanted something all I had to do was ask one of them what day it was. On odd days, Shaun got it, on even days it was Sarah's. This worked for pretty much everything.
I was always a chaperon for my kid's field trips. I loved doing it too. It helped me know their friends. When I was growing up no one wanted to come to our house because they were afraid of my Mom. Now that I was a Mom I focused on our house being a place where my kid's friends felt comfortable. In truth, my kids became the most interesting people in my life. They were like unique flowers I had never seen before. Everyday I was excited to see them sprout a little higher and brighter. I was also enjoying their rebellion against surfing...it gave me a chance to experience the world of Drama Nerds and I liked the experience. Drama Nerds don't really care about class-envy. But I was never to leave a surfer behind.
Q
This year I adopted a fellow classmate of Shaun's named Q as a mentoring quest. I took him surfing for the first time and saw not only a real good athlete but also a youth heading for destruction because he had the free spirit of an artist. I had come to respect artists of every kind by now. I understood that the best ones were born with it. One of the early times I took Q surfing we went to the river-gettys at Wrightsville Beach.
"Don't go left or you'll end up on the rocks." I told Q. After surfing a while I went in a looked for him. He was going left and was so close to the rocks I almost panicked. Q wasn't dumb, he was a challenger like Sarah. He was a determined human being who was going to figure out the whys and hows of life through experience. I felt it necessary to help him find his way to the God he was searching for so he could have the independence God gives to us loose cannons. I was rich and I wanted to give something back. Mark liked to give away money, I liked to give hope. Q and I would develop a friendship that would last years. He was humble, intelligent, and an old soul, much like my own kids. I liked old souls....they didn't care about being rich, they care about contentment. When Q decided to put himself through Catholic Catechism I was impressed. I knew he was going to have an interesting life. He asked interesting questions.
L
Another friend that changed my life was L. We met in church and played softball together. L was an intellectual who read books faster than anyone I knew. We would talk about all the metaphysical things I was finding more important than the materiel things my money bought. He challenged my readings and he challenged my beliefs while making me feel smart. He brought Faith into the Value equation. He also brought division. He had interesting answers to good questions.
At 35 I was in a tug-a-war with myself. Should I head into my mid-life crises aristocratically or as the bourgeois I was? And, what was I suppose to do with the Bible teachings that say Wisdom is worth more than all the riches in the world?
I cared about this dilemma because I was a Mom and had to come to terms with the word Values. God had defined Value and all I had to do was implement it....right? But, I was so full of bling. My life was in a crossroad stall. My kids were a gift and I was damned if I would teach them to be snobs, but I worked hard to have all this money and I liked spending it....At 35 the question became, "What did I want Value to mean in the light of eternity?" What did I want to pass on to my kids?
I'll admit I was happy when neither of my kids adopted a southern accent. I guess I could go into my 40s hypocritically.
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