Bulkheads, Signs, and Mr. Rogers

About 15 years or so ago, we went through a house remodel/renovation. We had a few walls removed, converted our covered porch into a dining room, and redid the kitchen. No regrets - we love the space even now, all these years later - but it was dicey there for a while. Anyone who has been through a major renovation knows what I'm talking about.

As a result of the kitchen renovation, we ended up with a bulkhead above our new island. The inimitable Mrs. K, who is in charge of anything (like decorating) involving good taste, decided we needed a sign to spruce up this empty space. The kitchen is the heart of the home, so we wanted to find something that captured the essence of our family. This proved no easy task. We looked at countless signs in boutique shops everywhere we went: Stone Harbor, Ocean City, Annapolis, downtown, even in other states when we visited relatives or friends. No dice. Everything was either too corny or too cliche.

"Live, Laugh, Love"

"Our family is like trail mix - a little salty, a little sweet, and lots of nuts!"

"Bless Our Home"

Apologies if you have one of the above signs hanging in your house - just not what we were looking for. I finally decided to have one custom made to give Steph as a Christmas present. Of course, that didn't solve the dilemma of what the sign should say. I eventually landed on three words that, if they didn't exactly capture our family's essence, at least captured our aspirations: 

The trailer for the Tom Hanks Mr. Rogers movie dropped a while ago to great fanfare. I'm sure I'll go see the movie when it comes out, though I doubt the Hanks version will be as good as the documentary, and the documentary wasn't as good as the book. Read the book. Always. 

The remarkable thing about Mr. Rogers is he had no onscreen persona - what you saw on screen was just who Fred Rogers was as a human being. He once said, "There are three ways to achieve ultimate success in life. The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. And the third is to be kind." Fred was my kind of guy. Or maybe I should say, the kind of guy I wish to be.

I could easily replace my "Love-Serve-Encourage" sign with one that reads, "Be Kind." After all, loving, serving, and encouraging others is just giving kindness feet. I mention all this because I'm forever saying leadership is really only about two things - character and competence. This is the character piece of that equation. To be a leader is to be responsible for loving, encouraging, and serving others. If you aren't doing that, then you aren't leading, no matter your title. It seems to me this old world needs a few more neighbors like Fred Rogers. Be kind. Be kind. And, for good measure: be kind.

Skunks, Poems, and Charlie Brown

I came across a snatch of poetry that was shared with me years ago by Pat Brown, an English chair I worked with at Overlea High School. Pat was inordinately fond of sharing literary jetsam with the Yahoos she'd been saddled with as colleagues, presumably in an effort to civilize us. She met with mixed success on that front. But some of the stuff she shared stuck with me, including this little excerpt from a poem titled, "A Valentine for Ernest Mann":

Once I knew a man who gave his wife
two skunks for a valentine.
He couldn't understand why she was crying.
"I thought they had such beautiful eyes." 
And he was serious. He was a serious man
who lived in a serious way. Nothing was ugly
just because the world said so. He really
liked those skunks. So, he reinvented them
as valentines and they became beautiful.
At least, to him. And the poems that had been hiding
in the eyes of skunks for centuries
crawled out and curled up at his feet.

I've always loved A Charlie Brown Christmas, like many folks I suppose, judging from its enduring popularity. Every year I laugh at Lucy shaking her money jar, tear up when Linus gives his "meaning of Christmas" speech, and endlessly repeat the classic line, "You're taking the curl out of my naturally curly hair" to my daughter Alice. And you can't beat the great Vince Guaraldi's score. For all that, my favorite scene is when the kids fix up the ugly, stunted, half-dead little tree Charlie Brown bought and Linus says, "I never thought it was such a bad little tree. It's not bad at all really. Maybe it just needs a little love." I imagine in that moment all the poems that had been hiding in that little tree crawled out and curled up at Linus's feet.

You see, the world tells us beautiful things are loved. I think loved things are beautiful. And if that's even a little bit true, consider the power each of us holds to bring out the beauty in those around us. Imagine if we spent our days loving people with such extravagance that we made them beautiful in the process, just like Charlie Brown's little tree. Friends, consider: who in your life has poems hiding in their eyes, waiting for your love so they can crawl out and curl up at your feet?

Nothing is ugly just because the world says so. Prodigal love can make anything, or anyone, beautiful.