I'm no Pollyanna

Confession—I am so NOT a Pollyanna. Shocked? Not if you know me.

Pollyanna is the title character from a book written by Eleanor H. Porter in 1913. The girl with the sunny disposition went through life playing “The Glad Game”. She looked for the positive in every single situation.

The Glad Game was created by her dad one Christmas when her poor family received gifts from the mission. The little girl was hoping for a doll, but found only a pair of crutches inside the gift box. Her daddy taught her to look at the good side of things—in this case, to be glad about the crutches because she “didn’t need ‘em!”

The word Pollyanna is now a part of our English vernacular. We use it to describe a person who sees the good in everything. The word is sometimes used as a derogatory slam to describe someone who is so sickeningly positive that they seem completely out of touch with reality.

I consider myself a realist. Look, I would rather see the bad and deal with it, than wear blinders that keep me from seeing the whole picture. I believe in facing challenges and negativity head-on. Subtle flaws and imperfections add unique depth to works of art.

Some time ago I met a young man who had just moved to Fresno from Phoenix, Arizona. He didn’t know much about our fair city, but he’d been offered a teaching job at Fresno City College, so he came. What little he did know about us was negative.

I Googled the phrase “Fresno voted worst place” and came up with 91,400 hits. I then tried the phrase, “Fresno voted best place” and the search engine gave me just 13,700 findings.

Well, no wonder the teacher had heard far more bad press about Fresno—there’s so much more bad than good out there!

The new resident was expecting to drive up Highway 99 and see a hot barren stretch of desert nothingness. Instead, kind people and trees—lots and lots of trees, greeted him.

I read a couple of the Fres-“NO” articles found by Google and one writer said Fresno needed more trees. The college instructor, however, said he was amazed and enchanted by our abundance of trees. In fact, he offered, the local chamber of commerce ought to use our ample wooded goodness as a selling point in the come-to-Fresno brochures.

There is much wrong with our city—drugs, homelessness, low-scoring students, joblessness, and poverty. It used to be that the Appalachian Mountains were home to our country’s poorest people. Fresno County now boasts that dubious distinction.

But there is so much to celebrate about our Central California home. If you live in the Fresno/Clovis area, you are less than an hour away from some of the most beautiful and scenic mountains in the world. The Sierra/Nevada mountain range is the gorgeous home to many of the oldest and tallest trees in the world—the mighty Sequoias. We’re less than three hours from the fabulous Pacific Ocean. We easily take day trips to Yosemite, San Francisco, or Hollywood.

We are home to a myriad of artists and their incredible work. We boast fine theatre, exquisite dining, fabulous music, quirky art communities, and the best-in-the-world agriculture. Nothing beats our homegrown peaches, nectarines, and watermelon on a warm summer day. If you love rodeo—we’ve got it. You like water parks? We’ve got two! You’ve never seen an underground garden? Plan a visit to the world-famous Forestier Gardens.

I’m no Pollyanna. I see all that’s wrong with this city—just like I see all that’s not right in my life and in my family. It’s the good AND the bad that creates the depth of beauty that is my world. I won’t ignore the negative; rather I will do that which is in my power to make it better.

I’ve walked in the desert, and I found respite under the trees. I feel the hurt, and I appreciate the joy. I grieve for the sick and addicted, and I rejoice with the free. I see the good, the bad, the ugly, the fabulous, the weak, and the strong.

Okay, so I’m not a Pollyanna. But if no one sees that which is wrong, who will rise up to say “I can help”?

Taking Responsibility to Make The Good Stuff!

I know the almost irrepressible urge to seek and get revenge. Who doesn’t know what it is to want someone to hurt as much you do? There’s a scene in both the film and stage versions of “Steel Magnolias” where after Shelby dies her mom M’lynn says, “I just wanna hit somethin’ and hit it hard”. When we’re in pain, whether it be emotional or physical, the thought of being alone in that pain is hard. Pain makes people say and do crazy stuff. I understand that truth.

When my kids were lost and in their darkest place I was in intense pain. I really didn’t know how to deal with it, and who better to take my frustrations out on then the people closest to me. A series of sad events that brought even more distress to our lives had left us largely disconnected from long-time friends and some family, so Tom and I took our pain out on one another. Of course our kids weren’t alone in their addictions and their cohorts had parents who needed to release their anguish. When they vented they used us as a punching bag. We got several of those, “your bad kid is ruining my good kid” phone calls. Tom let those attacks roll of his back, but I internalized them.

I always believed that teaching our kids to take personal responsibility for their own behavior was a lesson that would serve them well in life. I never put 100% of blame on another child, and I never challenged a teacher—even when I disagreed with her teaching style or the way she punished my child. I believed that my kids needed to learn to respect authority and to understand that I would not step in and undermine their teachers or the classroom rules. I realize that anyone who may have known my kids in their pre-teen and teen years might be surprised to learn how very hard I worked at teaching them to respect adults, but I did try! I never bought into the “they just fell in with the wrong crowd” argument. People (little people and big people) are drawn to others with the same likes and interests. My daughter once told me that she didn’t persuade anyone to do anything they didn’t want to do or weren’t already doing. More truth. I never really figured out how to deal with the phone calls from those parents who were determined to blame me for the choices their kids were making. I typically agreed with them and accepted it probably was entirely my fault that their kid was on drugs. And I cried a lot.

Today our kids are healthy and moving forward with their lives. We are all putting our past behind us and our family relationship is strong and healthy. We like each other. Every once in a while my kids will hear from someone they used to hang out with or get into trouble with. Although some of those kids are in better places, I am sad to say that the kids whose parents blamed me for their ills are not doing so well. My kids took responsibility for their behavior. They’ve never blamed anyone (not even me) for their bad choices and they’ve paid dearly for their mistakes. I never blamed another parent for the decisions my kids were making for themselves, and I would never have considered blaming their child either. Childhood is the time to makes mistakes, then learn and grow.

I believe that taking responsibility for my indiscretions empowers me to take responsibility for making the good stuff happen. The good stuff isn’t an accident. Take ownership and make it happen!