Posts Tagged: community
Finley and Jonathan – a bond is formed and lessons are learned
How do you write a blog through tears of gratitude and hope? We’ll see I guess. Get out your score cards…. and I’ll tell you about the bond my son has formed with Jonathan, a driver for Pepsi Co.
As part of raising a toddler into a civilized, empathetic human (and let’s be honest – as a way to mix it up and get both errands done and distractions created for a boy who doesn’t want to sit still sometimes), Finley and I run errands on Tuesdays. Part of our route is to hit Dollar General stores in our area.
Months ago during one of our weekly outings, Finley and I kept criss-crossing the store with the Pepsi distribution/delivery guy. We would zig to get out of his way, and he would zag and apologize. After a few bouts of this do-si-do, I told him to stop apologizing. His name is Jonathan and he and Finley hit it off because my boy likes to work, loves an activity that requires boy strength, and if a large vehicle is involved…….. forget about it. Jonathan’s job hit all the right notes, plus Finley is a talker and especially loves to tell everyone about tractors. We finish our shopping and Finley wished Jonathan a good day.
The story doesn’t end there. Jonathan also delivers to the Dollar General where my mom works and that same day mentions to my mom that his day had been made earlier by meeting this cute redheaded kid out shopping with his mom. He described the encounter and how funny and sweet it was, and my mom said, “wait…. it wouldn’t happen to be this child” and produces a picture of Finley from her phone. Jonathan is flabbergasted and so another connection is born. Later, my mom tells me that Finley has a fan in the Pepsi delivery guy.
Well, this goes on for many months. We see Jonathan on our Tuesday route and he begins to show Finley how to stack and organize, tells him all about his truck and Finley is dying to help. Now, they are co-workers and at this point, friends and neighbors in our town have heard about and love this story of the friendly Pepsi guy and the talkative redhead looking for a side hustle, if not a new buddy.
What makes this more than a pleasant encounter is the fact that this busy man – on a timed schedule and on a route to many stores – took a little bit of his time to be present with Finley. It is said that it takes a village to raise a child and I don’t believe it’s just about grandparents, teachers and people from church. This man – this once stranger, without over-intellectualizing and without agenda, had invested in my son. He prioritized both his job – which he does so well in our community – and the curiosity of my child. I kept thinking, as others in the community have, that this man from Pepsi is an example of what can be right in this world.
The capper is that Jonathan went into his own pocket to make sure that Apprentice Finley got a uniform for Christmas. He had a shirt and cap made for Finley to wear “during his shift.” Theirs is the sweetest, most innocent bond. How do I not thank God for that – for Jonathan? We live in a cynical world and taking time to care about another person’s child, to notice the little stuff and to be present is a gift for which there is simply no yard stick.
This isn’t just a story about my kid; it’s a story about community. As much as we are fixated on our technology, isolated through circumstances or choice, we are still a people yearning for engagement and connection. Caring about your neighbor matters. Caring about the generation that is still unformed but right on your heels matters. Showing patience and graciousness when you have a deadline and a million other micro-decisions to make … friends THAT is a demonstration that Jonathan is teaching my son.
As we creep up to 2022, my wish is that we find and celebrate the Jonathans next year, that WE make an effort to BE a Jonathan to someone. We can both be and admire those people, and I think this is a resolution worth putting our backs into. Happy New Year to you all!
Small business love up: Anchor Coffee
Some day, perhaps, this bundle will pop into Anchor for “a cuppa.” For now, he’s a cute side-car at a place we adore.
As we celebrate small businesses during this government and socially sanctioned downtime, I would be remiss if I didn’t shine a light on Anchor Coffee. It’s a place we love filled with people we love.
Our family goes to church with owner Greg Brady and his family and we photographed them during their child’s dedication. It was a precious moment and we were honored to do it.
Anchor is a shop that we visit often for coffee or a beer and they have live music, too. Boy are we missing them during this quarantine time.
Like all businesses in the community, they’re serving as much as they can to stay in business and continuing to be enormous sources of love and light when we need it most.
Are there businesses that you love and miss? If you can, consider buying a gift certificate, ordering curbside or just calling to tell them “we miss you!!” God Bless Anchor and those we get to worship with, pray for and do life with. I hope you will support and follow Anchor Coffee if you’re a Wilkesboro local.
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happy 4th of july from your photographers and fellow americans
Today is Independence Day in the U.S. and it’s no newsflash that we Americans feel, at times, like we don’t recognize our country… or each other, or what we grew up with. Some days, it feels like we’re truly coming apart at the seams. If you watch the news – any American news, really – this is the topic: We’re divided. Social media hasn’t helped us find our better angels, either. And the result is that we’re world-weary, anxious, suspect of others, and sad. Did I say, “weary?” Well, I’ll repeat it.
But as I sit here thinking about all of this angst and noise, and then think about what today means, I don’t have to grasp for gratitude. I still feel it because I’m surrounded by things that make me feel it.
I was “brought up,” as we say in the South, with love. Then I found a partner in life who loves me and I him. We understand that crazy balance of partnership love and personal independence and we try to keep the two in harmony. We also have our core values: Be kind, be open-hearted, be respectful, give grace when you want to judge, show integrity, do your best and assume the best in others – live the golden rule, etc. Ryan and I try to live out these values daily.
I’m grateful for that.
We started our life and our business and there have been ups and downs, and there will be more, but we’ve made a point to reach out, because two people are just two people. It’s not enough.
You need more. You need community. You need others of all stripes. We found that community and we keep finding it. We found all of you!
We discovered tribesmen and women in our home community of Wilkesboro, and in Charlotte, Asheville, Charleston and many points beyond. These cohorts are made up of locals and transplants, fellow travelers, passers-through, memorable acquaintances, artists, business professionals, beer lovers, kid lovers, photogs, music junkies, rabid gardeners, home renovators and creatives. Our freedom grew by letting others in. It all – YOU ALL – make our life better. We’re grateful for that.
Then God sent us this Nut. I say it with Christian love, but he’s a nut.
Finley James joined us just over 8 months ago and our home life and community – and what that even meant up til then – expanded yet again. Our son is a gift, but he’s also our teacher and in-house comedian who cracks us up, makes us scratch our heads, and finally flop into bed exhausted. But I tell, with gratitude, that we’ve never felt more happiness in our growing sense of life, community and love. This little disruptor is a gratitude machine.
We know, sweet community, that you’re celebrating the 4th of July and that’s as it should be. Showing gratitude makes your life expand in ways you might never expect. We are celebrating too. My hope, and Ryan’s as well, is that during this major U.S. holiday that you’ll find a minute in the chaos to really identify the things that you’re grateful for and sit with them – mentally or physically if you can.
We as parents and friends and community members are all still intact, despite the stuff that worries us in the daily news. We still have work to do to be better and more inclusive, more civil and more tethered to each other in the right ways….. but community, expansive hearts, curiosity, care and feeding, forgiveness, affection, tolerance and resilience are as much a part of the American core value system as liberty — in fact, those things undergird liberty.
Happy Independence Day.
Go Celebrate! We love you,
Misty & Ryan
We love family portraits whether they are set in the studio, the great outdoors, a specific location like the mountains or high country, or on our property in our outdoor portrait garden. Pixels on Paper photographs, engagements and weddings, brides, and special events and portraits of all kinds in our Wilkesboro, NC studio. We would be honored to meet with you, learn about you and your family and be a part of taking special portraits that will become, we hope, family heirlooms.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United States License
All photos are ©2018 Pixels On Paper. Do not copy, crop, or remove watermark.