What's the matter George?
Didn’t I tell you that George Dawson was 103 and that he just recently wrote a book called Life is so Good. When George was a boy of twelve, the oldest of the children, poor, black, and away from home for the first time, he was working on Mr. Little’s farm. It was 1910. His family worked every waking hour to make a living out of the farm but things became especially hard with poor crops and mortgage payments. Mr. Dawson agreed that George could go work for Mr. Little. This would mean one less mouth to feed and a wage coming in. Like so many others this boy had had to become a man long before he was a teenager. Even so, away from home, eating alone, sleeping alone in a tiny shack away from the main house, alone I said, sleeping on a wooden platform with a corn husk mattress on top—that was a burden and a half. He was twelve years old, for pity’s sake.
At home he slept with his brothers and sisters and when he visited the Coals and stayed the night they just squeezed him into the bed with their kids. Now away from home, "I would have given anything," he said, "for a crowded bed with my brothers and sisters sleeping and breathing next to me." How deep the need in us for warm human companionship.
"And then I thought of Mama’s biscuits. It would have been okay in the daytime when I was working. But somehow out there by myself in the shed, thinking of her biscuits only made me cry. Mrs. Little made good biscuits, but they weren’t Mama’s. I wanted to be strong, but I couldn’t help myself. I just wanted someone, Mama or Papa, to say it would be okay, or even for one of the little ones to ask, ‘What’s the matter, George?’ " Even for one of the little ones to ask, "What’s the matter, George? "
There’s something about that phrase. The combined innocence of a child’s question and a twelve year old who must be a man before he has been allowed to be a boy. Oh, ohhhh, what a pain-filled world where children bear so much of the hardship and oh what a lovely sight it is to come across adults whose only interest in children is to nurture and help. How profoundly important are good deeds that are done—something kind, something sensitive and strong. How precious the memories of kindnesses are that make a child believe that the world is not all darkness or sleaze or cruelty. A flash of lightning, brief but it let’s you get your bearings in the dark. And how sweet it is to see a concerned face, a little face, too young to be hypocritical, looking at you with a mixture of wonder and pain and a universe of sympathy. How blessed the memory that someone made your tears and your aching heart their concern, with a tiny voice and big lovely, sincere question, "What’s the matter George?" How do you think George Dawson made it to 103 with a great spirit, having seen and felt all he saw and felt?
And who, if anyone, is going to look back and remember me at any age saying, "What’s the matter George?"
©2004 Jim McGuiggan. All materials are free to be copied and used as long as money is not being made.
Many thanks to brother Ed Healy, for allowing me to post from his website, the abiding word.com.
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