MLK Day of Service and Revisionist History

Yesterday, the family spent the day at the West Duwamish Greenbelt planting native species, shoveling and schlepping mulch, and uprooting blackberries.  One of Peter's teachers suggested the idea as a service project for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.  A handful of families showed at this event sponsored by the Nature Consortium.  We worked alongside 250 or so other people -- mostly high school and college students.  This was double the number of people they had the year before.

The kids were reluctant to go.  The boy was not excited when he arrived and saw only one other classmate there.  The promise of free pizza at the end of the day brightened his mood, and he joined the other boy.  They shared a shovel and began to dig holes for plants.  After the plants were in the ground, we moved the mulch.  I sweated out a Snapple I had back in 1996, and my back aches today from yesterday's work.  My daughter insisted on pulling out a blackberry rootball on her own.  When I asked to help her, she declined.  "No.  Some other person helped me earlier and they took all of the glory for my giant rootball."  Persistence and independence--I suppose those are two good attributes to show on MLK Day.  And yes, there was posturing over who got the largest rootball.

I hope this Day of Service becomes a habit for my family.   I remember those moments of service in my childhood and early years most vividly.  When I was in high school, we visited the Open Shelter, playing bingo with people who were hard on their luck or were suffering from addiction.  On man was a painter who couldn't find work.  He was in Columbus looking for a job, while his family lived in a small town hours away.  Remembering the work we did at the Open Shelter has a bigger impact on me now than it did then.

I hope my kids look back on this with revisionist history and see yesterday as a time when they gave back to the community, not as a time they missed out on fun.  We didn't spend the day skiing or playing video games.  We didn't take a trip out of town.  We spent four hours moving the earth alongside 250 other people in honor of man who tried to make the world a better place for everyone.