Janelle Evans

In these tough economic times, I find it hard to breathe sometimes.  The rising gas and food prices, chip, chip, chip away at what little sanity I have left.  No, Mr. President, I don’t own a Hybrid, and making five more years worth of car payments just to get one doesn’t make much sense to me.  I’m drowning as it is, why add another millstone around my neck?  

Then I notice my piano bench.  It’s surface is scratched and has sections where the finish is worn thin—blemishes I choose not to fix.  Each one stands as a reminder of my first year of marriage.  A time when we had even less, yet we survived.

Back in a basement room of the first hotel ever built in the city was our apartment.  The place had no air-conditioning, a little space heater that in the wintertime did little to heat the space, and pipes showing above where sections of the ceiling were missing.  Yeah, it was a spider infested, fun place to live.  In this 100-year-old location, my piano bench became our table.  We didn’t have money to buy one, and my very wise husband refused to use a credit card.  (Remember that make due or do without I talked about)

It took me six months to save enough for our first $100 table and set of four chairs.  Six months of meager burnt dinners served on my piano bench.  (Dinners we laughed at, but ate.)  And homework done on its surface while kneeling on a warped wooden floor. 

After hearing the President’s speech this week, I realized there was more intelligence in the marks on my piano bench than him, or his spend more and we’ll eventually pay for it attitude.

Tighten your belt, there’s more you can do, each groove in my piano bench reminds me.  Don’t wait for the conspiring men running this country to do it.  We have to learn to be happy with less.  And not just until the economy recovers—forever.  Do you really need that brand new car every two years, or the fancy house you can barely afford?  What if you never ate out again, is it really such a travesty?  Expending all our effort to acquire money, power, things, doesn’t change the end result of this life.  You’ll die, and none of it will be going with you.    

Every morning I corner my daughter in the bathroom so I can pull her long locks out of her eyes.  On one of these mornings this past week, between her tears and my threats to shave her bald, she asked me.  “How do I become a writer?”

Thrown off-balance by her odd question, I stumbled through an answer.  “Well…um…it depends on what kind of writer you want to be.  Why do you ask?”

Through the mirror’s reflection, she grimaced as I brushed one of the many knots her hair forms in the night then answered.  “You’re a writer.  I’m gonna be like you.”

That moment not only put a lump in my throat, but another rock of responsibility in my backpack of life.  For years, I’ve known my children watch me.  They pick up every bad habit I have and always seem to display it at the worst times.  Example:  My daughter, then two years old, saying Sh** loudly in the middle of church when she spilled her baggy of snacks.  See—the worst times.  But hearing her desire to emulate my career choice, showed me how much power I really have in my daughter’s life.

A power, as adults, we all have on the youth around us—even teenagers—though they will roll their eyes while reading this.  We are whom these kids look to for direction.  And I fully expect to hear my daughter tell me she hates me when we reach the teenage years, but I know the truth.  I am her guide.  It’s a weight I physically feel on my shoulders every day.  I can only hope I won’t screw it up too badly.

My mother has a saying, that’s been on her fridge for as long as I can remember.  “Stick to a task ‘till it sticks to you, beginners are many, finishers are few.”  This week I finished the second novel in my Duke to Duchess book series, a moment, that for me, reaffirmed the importance of perseverance. 

Too often in this “immediate gratification” society we live in, people give up when something is hard.  Or they’re not the best at it.  Or it doesn’t come “naturally”.  In my life, the list is endless of things I’ve struggled to do.  Swimming is one that comes to mind.  I became a lifeguard out of necessity, needing the certification for the hearing-impaired camp I worked at as a teenager.  My strokes stunk.  I moved at such a slow pace the ninety-year-old man in the next lane over was passing me.  But while gulping gallons of water and clinging to the wall every five strokes or so, something happened, the gallons became pints, five strokes became ten.  I am now a proficient swimmer, not Olympic worthy, but from years of lapping, I can now keep up with the average eighty-year-old.

There are so many tasks out there we will be asked to do.  Odds are you’re not going to like them all, but “stick to it” just the same.  Remember the gratification you’ll feel is multiplied by the effort it took to finish.  That means…I’m off to the store for more bum-glue. There’s a book three inside me needing to get out.