Last week in the Life Skills Class where I help as a paraprofessional, we played a game of Jeopardy on the white board. All the categories had to do with personal safety. The middle schoolers would pick a category like home alone, stranger danger, or technology and then pick a 100-to-500-dollar square in that category. Next, they would try to answer that square’s question correctly. Questions were things like, “Who is a stranger?”, or “What should you say if someone calls and asks for your mom, but she isn’t home?”
It was a great way for the students to learn about some serious stuff. The game was even more fun because one of our boys kept saying in different accents, “Do it with Joy!” Even the kids who were resistant to playing joined in as we all chanted “Do it with joy!“
A little joy can make such a difference. I felt it again when a friend sent me a picture Hannah, our daughter, had drawn when she was nine. Hannah colored it in response to the question, “How do we be people of peace?” Hannah wrote at the top of her picture, “Invite Everyone to Play”. The drawing contains lots of different kinds of people, many of them with broken limbs in casts. I was intrigued by her inclusion of people with so many injuries. Fifteen years later she is now completing her final clinical rotations of PA school. Her 9-year-old self somehow knew something about her future self. Hopefully she will always do it with joy like her drawing suggests.
Do it with joy! In my past role as a pastor, I met some folks who did life with joy. Their lives were not necessarily easy, but they found joy in living. I was reminded of one of those people this week by a co-worker, Lisa, who commented about a former next-door neighbor on W. Mankato St. who had an incredible garden. I realized she was talking about Phyllis. Phyllis had an amazing garden, harvesting over 200 pints of raspberries each Summer. She was famous for her watermelon pickles. She grew much of what her family ate.
Phyllis’ husband was a mailman, but he died at a young age of lung cancer, leaving her to care for her family. She went to work as a cook at Cobb School because it was something she knew. Phyllis was a fabulous baker. She made wedding cakes for lots of church members. I was told that her boys who lived with her even as adults never ate store bought bread.
Phyllis also was a dance instructor. She taught for many years at the Betty Fuller Dance Studio. Phyllis kept a tap board in her living room so that she could dance along with the Lawrence Welk show. She could out tap most of the dancers on TV.
It was good to remember Phyllis and share some of her stories with Lisa. Mrs. Staubs as Lisa always called her was truly someone who did it with joy.
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