What I Learned From The Resident Child

There is someone I look at and smile. I mean I can’t help it. When I see her I smile. When I think of her I smile. She is her own person, running on what she calls, “aloha time.” I think I’ve got her figured out then she does something surprising and delightful. She just had a birthday—her twenty-sixth—and we all went roller skating.  

I even roller skated. I was a little shaky at first but then I did okay as I moseyed around the floor. She slowed down for a moment to skate with me. To let me know I wasn’t forgotten.  It was lovely to see the Resident Child so happy like a little kid as all her twenty something friends skated with her. Nice to see that the doctrine of Never Grow Up has been passed successfully to the next generation.  

She says she’s the Resident Child because she lives just minutes away in the Hill Section of Scranton. She works hard and loves the people around her. Loves them. Cooks for them. Hangs out with them. Is there for them. 

Two Thanksgivings ago she was at my house at 8:30 on Wednesday night. She let it slip that she hadn’t been to the grocery store to buy things for the Thanksgiving feast. I nearly had heart failure. But you know what? Dinner was wonderful the next day. She pulled it off just like she always does.

I think the resident child knows how to live in the moment.  If the company arrives at six or seven, she knows how to roll with the flow instead of getting all bothered. 

She actually had dinners at her house where she didn't know what her friends were bringing. She didn’t say, “how about a salad,” to one, and “how about potatoes,” to another one.

If everybody brought dessert that is what they all ate. The point was being with the people, not eating the food.

The resident child knows how to enjoy herself. Skating or cooking or just hanging out with me as we watch “mindless TV.” When she is sad or bothered she is articulate and shows her deep compassionate heart. 

All hospitable people should take a lesson from her. And all of us would like to say, “Happy Birthday Anny and many, many, more. 

Aloha.