I was having lunch with some friends the other day and our conversation turned to our mutual love and respect for Mr. Rogers. Yes, that Mr. Rogers. The one with the neighborhood.
Doubtless not everyone discusses Mr. Rogers over a veggie sandwich but, in this particular group, we were talking about him and one person asked, "Why did I never meet this man?" I responded that I was fortunate enough to actually meet him.
Really. I got to have an honest-to-goodness, face-to-face conversation with, arguably, the most gracious man in our generation.
My children weren't allowed to watch much television. This fact is a huge source of dramatic revelation about how they were left out of a significant cultural rite of passage. Their friends discuss favorite TV shows from childhood and my own offspring are left to confess the didn't grow up with television. Those poor Griggs. They never even saw one episode of Saved by the Bell.
Freaks.
I'm sure to hear about this for many more years. The truth is, I've just never been much of a television person. It was on a lot when I was growing up because that's what everybody did...watch TV. But, aside from a few shows, television just never really captured my attention. Consequently, my own children watched very little and even then it was on an ancient set closed up in a cupboard with a picture so fuzzy it was hard to make out what was happening. Once when we were trying to watch the Winter Olympics we couldn't tell if there was a blizzard on the ski slopes or if it was just our television.
Anyway, one show my children were allowed to watch was Mr. Rogers. We all loved Mr. Rogers Neighborhood and his gentle, loving way of handling childhood issues. Naturally, when he was on a book signing tour to Denver we made the effort to go and meet him. He was, after all, Mr. Rogers! At the time I took up a huge amount of space as I was several months pregnant with Anna. And the line to see Mr. R was very long. We waited while I gestated and the boys restlessly fidgeted in place. Eventually, our turn to meet Mr. Rogers arrived. We asked him to sign his books The New Baby and You Are Special and then he started to talk with us. There we were with hundreds of other families but it was our turn and Mr. Rogers, with all his gentle spiritedness and thoughtful speech, tuned out everyone else and made our little family of four (plus one) feel as though we were the only people in the room with him. He took his time to talk with all of us and to listen as the boys expressed their feelings about having a new baby sister.
I'd never met a celebrity before or since. And I generally don't care much about what celebrities do or think. But this was Mr. Rogers. Sincere, sweet, caring, gentle Mr. Rogers.
Mr. Rogers wasn't a loudmouth. He was soft spoken and intelligent with a powerful message of care and grace and mostly of concern for the welfare of children. Never snarky. Always loving.
After our conversation at lunch the other day, I got the book You Are Special off the bookshelf. On the inside title page Mr. Rogers had underlined the printed word 'are' so the title looked like this: You ARE Special. Next to that he wrote, "I can tell!" and then he signed his name.
The cynical side of me thinks he probably did the same thing for every family who asked him to sign a book. But the other, less hateful side of me, knows that Mr. Rogers saw something very special in our family with two little boys eagerly awaiting the birth of their baby sister. They were, truly, excited for her arrival. When he said he could tell, I believe he could tell.
Which makes me think about how much I care for, notice, and look carefully at people in my own life. Do I stop, amid the noise and confusion of life, to take notice of who they are, what they need, or how special they are to this world? Do I not only notice but do I also make them feel special?
How easy it is to go through life thinking of my own needs without noticing what is happening in the rest of the world. How easy to pay attention to the loud, ugly, uncivilized messages of hate and war, and lack of care for the less fortunate. How easy and how wrong. Do we really need more 'strong leadership' in this country, or do we just need more of Mr. Rogers Neighborhood?
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