Tonight's picture was taken in February 2006. Mattie was almost four years old and as you can see was posing for a photo next to a flower pot. Peter and I won this flower pot at Mattie's preschool auction. What you may not be able to see is that the paintings on the side of the pot were thumb prints of every child in the classroom. Mattie was very happy that we won this item, as he was proud to contribute to this class project!
Quote of the day: Take care of all your memories. For you cannot relive them. ~ Bob Dylan
Last night Peter and I went out to dinner with our friends. Specifically they wanted to get together because they had friends in town they wanted us to meet. At dinner, one person asked us about Mattie and the Foundation. However, before talking about the Foundation they asked..... what was Mattie like? I have been writing this blog since 2008, for almost 10 years now! You would think I would be able to answer this question easily.
I actually did not find this easy at all to answer and when I came home and into today I have been reflecting upon why!? Mainly bothered by why I was SO BOTHERED by this question! First to be honest, I really do not like sharing the essence of Mattie, unless I know someone is truly interested and listening. If I deem this as just a perfunctory question, then my answer will be more guarded and to the point. So that maybe part of why I was bothered. The other problem for me is trying to capture and bring Mattie to life for someone who doesn't know him is hard! Not emotionally hard but simply hard to summarize Mattie in a few easy words!
So instead of maybe sharing adjectives to describe Mattie, which to me are meaningless, I shared some stories about Mattie that hopefully helped illustrate the boy he was. I think the best way to learn any complex subject matter is through stories. I know that was my natural teaching style as an educator! To answer last night's question, I turned to story telling. After all, stories influence our lives! We can't think about a red cape without thinking of the story of Little Red Riding Hood, or how about gingerbread? I know when I see gingerbread and think of the story of Hansel and Gretel.
The first story I told last night happened when Mattie was about three months old. He was sitting in our living room chair, with pillows propping him up. While sitting in the chair, Mattie began to make a wheezing sound. But it wouldn't go away! I truly thought he was having trouble breathing and immediately called the pediatrician. She asked me to describe the sound and what brought it on. Nothing brought it on, it just happened. I knew he hadn't swallowed anything to explain an obstruction of air. Anyway, the doctor told me to monitor him and remained on the phone line with me. Want to know what the wheezing was? It wasn't wheezing at all, it was Mattie's attempt at laughing. The more hysterical I got with the doctor on the phone, the more he wheezed. The doctor was thoroughly intrigued by Mattie's behavior! At a very early age, we learned that Mattie was a keen observer of other people and had a REAL SENSE OF HUMOR!!
The second story I told reflected on Mattie's "engineering" abilities. I always called him my "little engineer." A title he held from age 2. At 2 years of age, Mattie freely walked to the kitchen, went into our tool drawer and pulled out different screwdrivers. He then took them over to his hotwheel cars and proceeded to disassemble the cars, but WAIT..... it didn't end there. Mattie could reassemble anything he disassembled. An amazing and unusual skill!
Get the picture?! This is how I began to describe Mattie, by trying to paint a picture of how he lived his life, interacted with the world, and how those of us who knew him reacted to his thoughts, feelings, and antics. Stories describe Mattie in a 3-dimensional way that a list of words could never do! However, despite all my thinking about this question today, the thing that bothers me the most is I don't have a short description of Mattie to help convey the child to others who don't know him. Peter and I have platform speeches and taglines to describe the work of the Foundation, but I don't have the equivalent for describing Mattie. As I write this tonight, my conclusion to my quandary is GREAT! It is great because platform speeches and taglines are good to describe work, a mission, and agendas, but NOT human beings. So I stick to my gut instinct...... if you want to truly know Mattie and our experiences with him, you are going to need to want to invest the time to listen and converse, as I find short pat answers don't make me feel good and most importantly they do not do Mattie justice.
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