Technically Girl Scouts may not be a parish event, but we are commissioned from our church (as opposed to our school, for whatever reason) and we meet in the church basement.
Tonight we made a snack that required using a few kitchen bowls and spoons (Sr. Hildegard, if we need to do more than we did let me know but I think we cleaned it all up). We walked into the kitchen and my girls looked around at the details I don't even see anymore.
The singing fish plaque on the back of the door. The, well, everything marked "Property of Fish Fry." The sign on the wall for those serving on the line, reminding them that they are serving "our guests." Poppy asked who our guests were.
Our guests.
I was expedient and explained the fish fry. But I let that question float in my head while we learned about food safety and how to measure milk in a cup and how much milk did we need....who are our guests?
And that question was answered, for me, just a few minutes later when the buzzer rang and one girl scout trailed in late. Arcelia and her mother Yvonne are not my favorite people. Actually, Arcelia is just fine. Yvonne, though, is not someone I want to spend any time with, at all. In the recent past I have been somewhat thin-lipped and thinly-veiled with my emotions. I don't even know if she's noticed. Her behavior hasn't changed at all, for good or bad. Maybe....no, I'm pretty sure I've been behaving badly.
To our guests.
She came in with a flurry of her own emotions, hands waving in the air, bending forward when she talked to me, like she was aiming for me with her forehead. She followed me into the old atrium. She chatted to me as I got the girls centered on their next task.
"Can I stay? Can I help?"
I thought of something I'd read about Benedictine hospitality back when I was becoming an oblate (I have been remiss in Benedictine reading lately...). I think it was in How to Be a Monastic and Not Leave Your Day Job or one of those books by Br. Benet. How an elderly monk was on his way to do something that was important to him, whatever it was, when the doorbell rang and people had come to tour the monastery. He threw his hands in the air and muttered, "Now I have to do hospitality!" And then went to do it.
That is exactly how I felt as she asked those questions. "Sure," I answered, making eye contact. "I can always use another set of hands." I explained the activity. She mother-henned a bit more than I would have, but she stayed and maybe that's what she wanted to do. We got the activity done, had the snack, and then she stayed to help Jana and I clean up after the girls had left (the last bits in the kitchen, that is--the girls clean up their stuff all the time). I asked her if she'd like to come a bit early next time and help set up. She said she definitely would. I'm not sure if it will come to pass--she classically falls through on her promises--but I knew she was going to volunteer with hesitation and asking her, well, made it seem like she was doing me the favor instead of what was really the truth.
It probably wasn't my most Christian example of hospitality. But frankly, visiting my ailing grandmother is easy. Inviting new neighbors over for coffee is easy. Babysitting Dolores' granddaughter in a pinch is incredibly easy compared to handling the relationship with Yvonne. I have fantasies of paying her off. Of claiming there isn't going to be a troop next year and then sneaking around behind her back. Things that won't work.
I'm stuck with her.
I don't think we'll ever be friends, for many deep reasons, but I think I can manage to be nice. I broke the ice today. We'll see if I warm up more next time.
Conversations with Middle Schoolers #55
11 years ago