Counting the Cost

Counting the Cost

Two days after Christmas we celebrated my seven and three-year-old nephews’ January birthdays with presents and a pizza party. The thing is, my other five-year-old nephew’s birthday doesn’t come around until mid July. So, with shiny new toys still piled in corners and red and green wrapping paper overflowing trashcans, my five-year-old nephew glumly watched his ecstatic brothers tear into gifts while he continued to receive none.

My nephew did quite well considering his five years (it took another 15 for me not to be envious at birthday parties), but once his brothers had finished opening their gifts and begun playing with them or feeding dollar bills into their new piggy banks lined up on the mantel, he couldn’t take it any more. Curling his body into the couch, he hid his face in the sleeve of his sweater and began to cry.

It was enough to break our hearts, but what were we to do? We didn’t want to take away from the birthday party by giving all the children gifts, but — being so close to Christmas — it almost seemed cruel not to give a gift when all the brothers had received one just two days before.

Right when Grandma was about to remedy the situation, the seven-year-old took it in his hands. Climbing back up on the fireplace ledge, the little boy solemnly popped open the lid of his piggy bank and extracted the $5 he’d just put there. While Mom, Dad, Grandma, Grandpa, aunts and uncles watched with mouths agape and hearts wrenching, the seven-year-old clambered off the ledge and walked across the carpet toward his brother.

The five-year-old wiped the tears from his eyes with his sleeve. “What’re you doing?” he asked, his voice quieter than we thought possible.

“Giving you this.” The seven-year-old held out the crisp $5.

For a moment the five-year-old just stared at his brother with a mix of confusion and wonder. Then his tear-streaked face cracked into a grin, he took and pressed the bill against his sweater like it was gold. “Thanks,” he whispered.

I looked at my sister-in-law; my sister-in-law looked at me. Both of us had tears in our eyes, but they were nothing compared to Grandma’s. I knew it was everything she could do not to run over and squish her seven-year-old grandson in a million dollar hug.

Lately I’ve been pondering the lesson my nephew taught. He gave what he’d just been given without counting the cost — perhaps without even knowing the cost — and I realized many times adults give only when we know we will “get” in return.

Whether it is our time, our vehicle, our energy, our love, we keep most of what we’ve been given to ourselves. Perhaps we fear once we give, everyone within a 50 miles radius who’s a moocher will come beating on our door. (Haven’t we all thought this at one time or another?) Perhaps we fear if we give to those who are strangers, we will have nothing left to give to those nearest and dearest to our hearts. Perhaps we fear if we keep pouring out, we will never get filled up and we will be shriveled and wasted before we have had the chance to become what we were created for.

I have certainly struggled with all these lies. Sometimes I feel like throwing a gigantic towel around the selfish glob of humanity (myself included, this would be tricky) and tossing it down a laundry shoot straight to Halifax. Sometimes I feel like people just aren’t worth it, and then I put on my hermit cap and hobble off to my writing world where I engross myself in characters who — most of the time — are more benevolent and loving by The End than they were in the beginning.

But then there are those saving moments like today when — in the produce section of Wal-Mart — I look over and almost start crying while sorting through avocados. For there was an elderly husband kneeling down, his bony spine contorted at an unnatural angle, while tying the orthopedic sneaker of his equally elderly wife. Both her arthritic hands were clenching the cart, and her rheumy blue eyes were looking up beyond the produce aisle, into a place none of us probably have ever seen. It took the husband half a minute to tenderly tie and double knot that single sneaker. I’m sure some of it was because he wanted to be thorough, to make sure she wouldn’t trip while they walked around the store, but I believe part of it was because he truly enjoyed doing that small gesture of service for his ailing wife. For although she couldn’t give anything in return but an unseeing stare and perhaps an absent smile, he still remembered the times when she could, and he wanted to repay her for them–if only with one tender double knot at a time.