Currently reading: George Lucas: A Life by Brian Jay Jones, The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah, and Dad’s Maybe Book by Tim O’ Brien

Currently listening (and crying) to: Avinu Malkeinu sung by Cantor Azi Schwartz

As a sometimes “too big for my britches writer”, or maybe it was just a beginner’s mistake, I once attributed a character I wrote about as someone who “lived life with quiet desperation.”

John-Boy (yes, the Waltons once again), used this quote in response to a conversation with his father and his father’s friend.

The two men were bantering about how poor they were, and how they absolutely did not want to attend their 25th high school reunion. Of course, many people see their high school reunions as a measuring stick of what they have accomplished in life and what they have to show for it.

I laughed at the comment because I used it, John-Boy used it, and Thoreau applied it to the commonality of man. You live, you make money, and you die. Thoreau, at the time of writing Walton, seemed to cast a snobby eye on that commonality. He attributed it to the local townsfolk, and categorized most of them as living lives of “quiet desperation”.

I thought to myself, “Well, not everyone can afford to live off their friend’s land for 2 years doing nothing but writing, reading, doing some light gardening, and watching bees.”

But I digress.

Most certainly, men and women both have mouths to feed, children to raise, medical bills to pay off, chores to do, groceries to buy, and in John Sr.’s day, support 7 children, his wife, and his two parents by running his lumber business during the Depression.

His classmates flock into town, most financially successful. Some were married several times, others had ill-behaved children, but all sent a not so subtle message that money isn’t everything.

John succeeded in being a wonderful father, husband, and son. A fact he overlooked in himself. Rather, he measured himself against his classmates based on monetary worth. In other words, in all those 25 years, “what did he have to show for it?”

The reunion dinner was held outside at John’s house. John’s wife, Olivia, volunteered their place to hold the event, much to John’s chagrin. But it ended up memorable, as everyone, men and women, rich and poor, gathered around the table. All symbolically placing themselves back at the starting line of life, they were surrounded by all the folks that knew them when they were young. And they all felt free to joke and laugh about their journeys since then.

They ended the evening with a tearjearking (yes, I cried here too) melody that all sang together. And all agreed that John, who was voted “Most Likely to Succeed”, still was well worthy of that title. All their monetary success, in their eyes, didn’t come close to his success of love and family.

The episode ends with John sitting there reflecting the evening, rather stunned. He then spins a 50 cent piece with one hand, a talent he thought he lost. A talent his sons went on and on about, one that narrator Earl Hamner (the real John-Boy) also mentions at the beginning of the episode.

All the riches, and all the struggling and getting by in the world, but John’s children were most impressed by how he could spin a coin with one hand.

The beauty and gift of children who love you and see all the diamonds in you that you often don’t see yourself.

Onward…