Do the right Thing

This is a story I was reminded of last week with a few more details filled in along the way.

My grandfather was #7 of 9 children. #s 2, 4, and 5 of his siblings married neighbouring siblings, let’s call them the Lang family.

Siblings moved around, got married, worked, had children and kept in touch. In the way of the era, sibling#1, call him Joe and then his son, call him Joey, stayed on the farm. As the cousins grew, even living in different communities, they knew each other, kept in touch and visited back and forth. It starts to take an effort to keep in touch and care about each other as you spread out, but some of these cousins remained close and kept an eye on their older relatives.

Sibling#8, let’s call her Joan, married a man who made money. They lived in various places, including the one we lived in when I was born, making it easier for a time to keep in touch with my parents, but they never had any children of their own.

When Joan’s husband died, she first moved closer to the original community where Joey and the Langs still lived and then to the right-next-door small town. From reports, so that the Langs could better take care of her.

As a child I tended to be invisible and often overheard things I didn’t really understand. Once when we were staying at Joeys, we also went to visit Aunt Joan, as usual – we always went to visit aunts and uncles, cousins, or some old friend from school wherever we went. Before we went to see Aunt Joan, Joey mentioned something to my dad about the cleanliness of the house and the contents of the pantry, which I thought was weird and probably why I remember.

I do remember the house feeling small and crowded. With us visiting (there were 6 of us) it wouldn’t have had to be extremely small to feel crowded. It could even be that Aunt Joan had fragile things so it felt scary to move around and risk breaking something, even if it wasn’t small.

In any case, whatever Dad reported back to Joey made him gloat a bit and I didn’t know any more until quite a few years later when I heard my Dad talk about Joey and the Langs.

Seems that Joey and Dad were not as concerned about Aunt Joan’s money as they were about Aunt Joan but they weren’t sure if the same could be said for the Langs.

Every now and then Joey would notice something about the state of Aunt Joan’s house or lack of good food and wonder out loud to the Langs if caring for her was too much effort for them. He wondered if he and my Dad should take their turn and move Aunt Joan to where Dad lived and relieve them of their burden.

Suddenly, whatever the concern was would be fixed and Aunt Joan would be properly taken care of.

When Aunt Joan died, she left her money to the Lang cousins. Joey was satisfied, because they had taken good care of Aunt Joan, albeit with a little encouragement. Dad still shakes his head and laughs whenever any of them come up in conversation.

I admire that kind of thinking. I am mostly of the “do the right thing because it’s the right thing” mentality. I’m sure there are times when other incentives help out, but it would never occur to me to visit my elderly aunt or neighbour, clean her house or get groceries so that she would leave her money to me. (For one thing, all my aunts had kids and for another, I never notice that things need cleaning…) And it would never occur to me to work sideways at that kind of concern.

Whether the neglect of the Aunt Joan was due to distraction or because the Langs really were most interested in her money and didn’t care as much about her, Joey kept the focus on doing the right thing.

First, he paid attention and noticed the problems – he cared for Aunt Joan. Then, he pointed out the concerns and problems to the Langs, who had taken on the responsibility of addressing those concerns but didn’t seem to be doing a thorough job and to another cousin who cared enough but wasn’t close enough to notice or address them without insider knowledge. And finally, he encouraged right behaviour by voicing some consequences that could result were the problems not addressed.

Joey never accused or attacked, that I know of. He did make it in the best interests of the Lang family to do and continue to do the right thing.

I want to be like cousin Joey but have no idea how to think that way.

Wrong topic

I’ve been hearing a lot about the flu of 1918 in the past year and half – or the Spanish Flu.
Lately I’ve been wondering if what we should have been talking about was Polio.
I haven’t taken time to research Polio and don’t really know what I’d find if I did, but my impressions are: very contagious, possibly more localized so why we aren’t comparing it to COVID (?), horrendous disease, horrible life long effects if you lived through it. And greatly feared. Because it affected everybody and separated families.
What I do know is that adults and children had to be left in institutions to help them breathe, sometimes for a year or more and those places with the necessary equipment weren’t usually down the street but in another place and there was only horse and buggy to travel. Given the complications afterwards, it sometimes was wondered if it was better for the child to die, but no parent wanted to lose a child. Everyone was relieved and grateful when the vaccines came out.
If we were talking about Polio now, would it make a difference?

Welcome to my Blog

2

This really is still under construction, even though I will post it and cause confusion in anyone who actually sees it.

I am planning to blog once a week once I get started – I was expecting to take longer to find out how to set up a blog site and expecting it to take longer to get domain names and stuff. Having never thought about it until fairly recently, it seemed like a big, overwhelming project to get started. Then I received an email – How to set up your Word Press blog in 20 minutes. Who knew? It did take a little longer, because there was an issue with the password generator. But less than an hour later, including the time that it took to watch the set up video – here I am.

I am an adult female Aspie, living in western Canada, who didn’t know there was such a thing as Asperger Syndrome until my late 40’s. Once I had heard of it, I recognized it in myself and had it confirmed. For the time being, I am not going to attach my name to anything. Maybe later, but not now.

I am picking away at various writing projects, including the idea of this blog, but finding it very hard to work and live and do anything else. This makes much more sense after the discovery of Asperger Syndrome than it ever did before, but the difficulties remain.

So, picking away is the operative phrase. I expect that when I get going, I will post blogs on Wednesdays. Maybe I can aim for mid-August – but it may be longer. A word of warning to you and a word of hope for me. It will happen, God willing. This site happened and that surprises me.

Everyone says (all the teaching gurus anyway) you need to picture your reader – figure out your audience. I can tell those gurus are not aspies. I can’t picture anything, really. Only things I’ve seen before. Imaging and “Imagine …” statements don’t do much for me.

“They” also say you need to figure out what you will focus on. It might happen. Aspies are supposed to have narrow interests or things that they focus on. I think my “narrow interest” is learning – anything and everything I can, so that tends to make my focus rather broad most of the time.

Maybe my next post will talk more about what this blog will focus on. If I figure it out. Or at least tell you what the name stands for. Or it might be fun to get people to guess what it stands for. Hint: C.A.R.V.E.D. from H.O.P.E. Any takers?