If you spot it - you've got it!
Real Stories with Mary Lynch • Published 8 Dec 2011 09:30
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I'm sure you have heard this saying and if you haven't or never knew what it meant it is like all these sayings, short, sweet and to the point. Well, I don't know about being sweet (not the way I was taught to understand it anyway) - They say if you spot something in someone else it's something you don't like in yourself. Rubbish I hear you say as you think of something you dislike about someone and think, no way, I'm not like that - I know I am not.
But like everything in life it has a positive side too that we were not told about so let me make this proverb a little easier to swallow - think of something that you really admire in another - this too holds true of this saying because deep down it is something that you admire in yourself but won't give yourself credit for!
Now, when brave enough, you go back to what you really don't like about that other person and ponder could it really be a reflection of me, remembering things are a lot easier to change in oneself than another.
All my life I have sat and listened to my siblings tell brilliant stories of the most ordinary events (well maybe some extraordinary!) and I have always loved their art of storytelling. Whilst hiking in the mountains with only the sounds of nature to compete with I would tell these stories to others explaining how much better the rest of the family could tell them.
But you tell great stories Mary they would say but I was having none of it. Even though I had spotted it I never believed I had got it, still don't, but I can write a better one than any of them or maybe that's just because none of them have started writing yet!
I hope you are following me in all of this because this works at a much deeper level that took me a long time to understand.
Recently I went to visit a woman who had lost her husband as I had not much chance to speak to her at the wake and could not get to the funeral. We were having a great chat when the doorbell rang and I thought this is my cue to go as I knew she was expecting a visitor. A lady arrived into the sitting room and my neighbour introduced us.
'I know who you are,' she said to me, 'you used to live out in Carraroe and were a friend of May Cunningham.'
'That's right,' I said, no more the wiser as to who she was.
'My mother lived up the road and was also a friend of Mays. Mary Mullen was her name.'
I smiled and said, 'I knew your mother well and visited her a few times with May.'
I don't know why but the conversation went on to talk about all the rest of the neighbours in that area. Of course we focused on a local tragedy when a local woman (before my time there) had been killed when a car had fallen on her as she changed a tyre.
'You know her son came to me once looking for a place to rent when I had flats,' I said.
'Oh he was a brat,' the visitor said, 'was always in trouble, broke his father's heart.'
'I know,' I replied and I proceeded to tell them the story of how I met him.
My doorbell rang one winter's night when I was alone with the children and when I opened it there stood a tall, handsome young man with a big smile.
'You have a flat for rent,' he said.
'Yes,' I replied.
'Could I see it?' he asked.
The flat in question was next door to our house, I showed it to him and he said he would take it. As I didn't know him I asked him his name and where he was from as I wanted to check him out. I was always particular as to who my tenants were especially ones I had to live beside.
I then wrote my number on a piece of paper and said,
'Give me a call in an hour.'
I then called the few people in the town that I trusted for information on people I did not know.
Each of them said the same thing.
'Don't let him in to it, he is nothing but trouble.'
An hour later he was at my door (never phoned) with the same big smile and asked brazenly,
'Well, what did you hear about me?'
'A lot,' I replied, 'and not one word of it good.'
He stood there and said nothing (still smiling).
There was something about him that I connected to so I trusted my gut and said honestly,
'The advice I got was not to give you the flat but, I will.'
He continued smiling and I continued talking, 'If I have one problem with yoy I will throw you out on your ear myself even though you may be a foot taller than me'
'Thanks,' he said and moved in next day.
It was not as if I had a problem renting the flat as I was never short of tenants at the time but something about him struck me deep down which did not make sense until a long time later.
We got on great and I never did have a problem with him, in fact he was one of the best tenants I ever had. He left after a year and eighteen months later I got a call from him late one night and he said,
'Mary, my girlfriend is pregnant and her mother has put her out and we have nowhere to go, have you any place, anywhere for us?'
Without hesitating I said, 'someone moved out today of the flat you were renting and you can have it, I'll sort it out now and you can move in tonight.'
'Who is your girlfriend?' I enquired.
When he told me I didn't have to make any calls as I knew the family well.
I scrubbed the flat as if it was for my own son and put the best of everything I had in it for them, so they would have a little nest to await the arrival of their child.
They moved in and stayed until the child was born and then left the country.
What, you may ask, did I spot in him that I had got?
The simple answer was a lost soul who had the knack of putting on a great show - I saw the pain behind the smile, - he was a little boy that had seen a car crush his mother to death and even before I was told the story I saw my reflection in him - a child of trauma.
Fifteen years later as we discussed him and I had told this story to the two women, one of them said,
'But he was so much trouble.'
'Did no one realize the hurt he was carrying?' I asked.
'He was only a child when his mother was killed,' she said, 'how could he remember? Well they did split the family after, the three children being sent to different homes,' she continued, 'his father remarried a lovely woman later but they could not control him when he went to live with them.'
'He was traumatised,' I said, 'still is if he has not got help.'
'I never thought of that,' she said.
Seemed like no one did I thought.
Shortly after I left wondering how could people not see what was so obvious to me the minute I met him but, as the saying goes, 'if you spot it you've got it,' and so often we try and help others with the problem we cannot see in ourselves at the time!
The last thing I told these two women that day was that years later I was in a local shop and the conversation turned to the same incident and the shop keeper said to me,
'You know Mary you took him in when no one else would, understood him in a way that no one else did.'
At the time I thought how did you even know he was in my flat, are you related? But the ladies said no when I asked last week.
As I walked out the gate to get into my car I wondered what was in this young man that the shopkeeper spotted?
Next time you are drawn to help someone, step back for a moment and ask yourself - what is it about them that I want to sort that I have not sorted in myself. Not that I am suggesting that we shouldn't help others as we always benefit enormously from doing this, but maybe we would benefit even more if we took the time to ask ourselves why we did it?
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