103 Years Ago Today

Joe was born March 3, 1906. The country was a melting pot then, a time when hard work was needed and cultural diversity was not. His parents emigrated from Beirut and Duma and knew what it was like to work hard. Amen was an orphan in Syria's dusty suburb of Damascus. Hard work and moxie brought him up out of the gutter--where he had survived by eating banana peels and anything else he could get his hands on--to business and farm ownership. Nazera probably had an easier upbringing, but most speculations conclude that if her former life in Beirut was any better then she would have had no need to uproot and plant herself in smalltown Minnesota. Fillmore county was the kind of place where if you were to fit in you had better be white, a farmer, and probably a Lutheran. So while Nazera still occasionally made cabbage rolls and baklava, and they both kept in touch with Syrian-Lebanese friends and family in Lacrosse, Wisconsin, slowly the outer signs of being Middle-Eastern descent fell away. By the time Joe reached his 20s,the only outward sign of his heritage was the occasional slip of a phrase that sounds like "teh huzza buteezik" and that I'm told translates as "stick it up your ass." Aside from the rare colorful language, he looked and acted like most other farmers in his area.

Maybe some of the locals knew that "he wasn't really from around these parts," but when they met him and saw the kind of work he did, it didn't really matter. He made a dollar a day, just like everyone else shucking corn, and he lived as honestly as he worked. Somewhat of a late bloomer, he was single until he was 30. Much to Nazera's chagrin, he wasn't interested in any of the Lebanese girls in Lacrosse. "There noses are too big," he'd tell her. Whether or not that was the real reason for his pickiness is impossible to know any more. What we do know is that on July 4, 1936 he met a young--18 years old--Alice Larson at a dance. He didn't dance very well, but rarely does love ever require graceful moves on a dance floor. He walked her home that night--ostensibly against her wishes--and in less than a year Alice and Joe were married.

Alice was fresh out of what they used to call "normal training," and she spent the rest of her life teaching: first in a one-room school, then elementary school, and finally acting as a principal. Joe never went past the 8th grade, and made his living farming and later working for a creamery. But despite his lack of formal education, there was a spark in him unfound in many who are more educated than he was. The greatest example of this is when he got the idea to make a sun dial. He walked up town to the library--he walked everywhere, it seems--and he got a book. Then he assembled some materials he had collected--he was always finding materials on these walks and recycling them--and he built a sun dial. I now teach students to pass their GED tests, which is four years past the education Joe had; I doubt many of them even know what a sun dial is, let alone has the capacity to build one.

Sometimes we may think taking your soul off mute means doing great--as in huge--things with your life. And maybe it does sometimes. Then again, taking your soul off mute can be about how you do the little things. Joe never had a shot at becoming US president, was never going to be rich, was never to travel more than one state away from where he was born. But he was fully himself. When he mowed his lawn--always with a reel mower--he made sure to clean and sharpen the blades, every single time. When his grandchildren came to visit in the winter, he always made sure they had warm enough clothes on. When he took one of them for a walk to the post office, he always made sure that grandson could keep up. "Am I walking too fast?" he'd ask me as we'd walk hand-in-hand. "Nope," I'd tell him. He really wasn't walking too fast. Then again, if he was, would I have said so? I always loved being by his side. Whether he was putzing around the garage or trimming the weeds or a thousand other little chores he did, I was right there with him.

He has been dead now since 1993, but when I remember how he'd never turn down reading me my favorite story, or when I remember the way he'd check to make sure we were wearing warm enough clothes, or remember the sound of his voice or the smell of his hat, it doesn't seem like he's all that far away. And this summer, when I mow my lawn, it'll be his old reel mowers that I use. No, he hasn't gone that far away. On my best days, there is still a bit of him that lives on in me.

Today as we awake and go to our vocations, let us be fully awake. Remember that no matter how big or small our job is that we should do it the very best we can. That means being fully in the moment, caring about who we are working with, and being the best self we can be. 103 years from now we will be gone from this Earth, but there may be some who carry our memory and stories with them. Let's be mindful of the stories we are creating and be mindful that this moment, and each moment today, will only happen once.

Now go and enjoy the day!