NOTES FROM THE HINTERLAND
GENEROSITY AND THE EBENEZER SYNDROME
By Laurie Meunier Graves
In Maine, winter begins in earnest around the first of December, stretches
through to March, and doesn’t begin to break until April. As I sit at my
desk (it’s December 3), the frost glitters and sparkles like a giant cold
diamond on my window. Outside, the ground is frozen hard, the wind is
blowing, and the temperature is below zero. The longest night soon will be
here, and during this harsh season, it seems appropriate to turn one’s mind
toward generosity.
We are a family that likes to give things away when we no longer have use
for them and the items are in tolerable condition. We live on a country road
that has a fair amount of traffic. All we have to do is put the item by the
side of the road and attach a “free” sign to whatever it is we are giving
away. Within an hour or so, the item will be gone. Over the years, we have
given away, among other things, a charcoal grill, complete with a tattered
cover; a Canadian rocker; a small bike my daughter had outgrown; and a coal
stove.
With each thing we give away comes a little story. The woman who took the
grill was so grateful to be getting it that she thanked me over and over
again after double-checking to be sure we were giving away the tattered
cover as well as the grill. It seems she had a big family and only one
grill. Two grills would make barbecuing much easier, and I smiled as I
watched her load it into her old car and drive away. I knew it was going to
a good home.
The Canadian rocker went to a tiny elderly couple who came in a huge, old
car. My husband and I offered to help them load it into the trunk, and even
though the trunk was big, we wondered if the chair would fit. We needn’t
have worried. The man waved us away, maneuvered the rocker into the trunk,
and drove off. I have visions of that chair going to a small, tidy house
with a wood stove. By that stove is another found rocker, and on cold
nights, the man and the woman sit by the stove, sip tea, and rock.
I must admit that the bike was harder to part with. It was my youngest
daughter’s first real bike, and how she loved it. But she had outgrown the
bike, and we have limited storage. Out by the road it went. Not long after I
put it there, a huge man with a shining baldhead stopped and asked if the
bike was really free. “Yes,” I replied. The man smiled and told me it would
be just the thing for his nephew, whose parents couldn’t afford to buy him a
bike. “Take it,” I said, feeling more than a little sad as I watched him
tuck the bike into his car. I knew the bike, like the grill and the chair,
was going to a good home, but giving away the bike reminded me that my
daughter was no longer small, and it felt as though I was giving away a
piece of her as well.
On the other hand, I was thrilled to get rid of the coal stove. In a moment
of weakness, thinking we might be able to use it, my husband and I took it
from my mother when she moved and had no room for it. As it turned out, it
was too small to be useful, and we finally decided to put it by the side of
road. Even though it was small, it was extremely heavy, and it took three
people and a dolly to get it out of our basement. Afterward, as I caught my
breath, I wondered who would want such a small stove, and I had visions of
it sitting on the front lawn all summer. Perhaps I could use it as a
planter?
But news travels fast in a small town. An hour or so later, as I was getting
rid of trash at the transfer station, a worker whom I had never seen before
came and asked how much I wanted for the stove we had by the side of the
road. “It’s free,” I replied. “Take it if you want it.” The man nodded and
told me he’d stop by after work to pick it up. He was as good as his word.
By nightfall, the stove was gone, and the front yard was rescued from, as we
say in Maine, a “wicked good” planter.
True generosity, of course, involves more than giving away things that are
no longer needed. It requires compassion, time, and a willingness to part
with hard-earned money. In truth, most of us don’t give us much as we can or
should. Sometimes it’s because we’re distracted by life’s pressures and
commitments and, as a result, give in a haphazard way. I’m sorry to say that
my family is guilty of this. If a suitable appeal comes in and we have extra
money, then we tend to donate to that charity or nonprofit institution.
There’s not much planning involved in the process, and I suspect this is how
it’s done in many families.
However, lack of generosity is sometimes a result of hard-heartedness, an
unwillingness to give, and a scroogelike desire to hoard more and more. If
enough individuals, especially those in power, suffer from these three
defects, then a whole country can become stingy and mean-spirited. A good
name for it might be the Ebenezer syndrome, and it seems to me that the
United States is suffering from this disease.
How else to explain the way we treat those who are poor, mentally ill, old,
or uneducated? Those who work in low-wage jobs often work eighty hours a
week just for the basics—an apartment, food, and transportation. Most of the
time they are without health insurance. Do we provide it for them? Indeed we
do not. The same goes for dental insurance. It should go without saying that
healthcare is a right, not a privilege, but our country does not seem to
view it as such.
Over the past two decades or so, we have made it our mission to
“deinstitutionalize” the mentally ill. Have we, as a society, invested in
group homes and community treatment so that the mentally ill will have a
safe, clean, warm place to live? Again, the answer is no. Instead, we have
come up with a far cheaper solution: let them live on the street and rummage
through trash to survive. Then, we have the gall to complain about “them”
and their “inappropriate” behavior.
We expect single mothers to work, and there is certainly nothing wrong with
this. But what happens if the mother is uneducated, poor, and untrained?
Where does she work? How does she get there? Who takes care of her children?
In truth, nobody seems to care very much about these mothers and children.
As with the poor in general, they have become invisible and therefore
disposable.
Except, of course, they are still around. They are the ones who bring you
food when you eat out; make your beds when you stay in a hotel; ring up your
purchases at the local convenience store; pump your gas; clean your house.
They are the ones you either step over or hurry past when you see them on
the streets. Can you spare some change? You can, but for the most part, you
don’t.
Sometimes I am deeply ashamed of this country, the richest in the world, and
the stingy, heartless society we have created. How did it come to this? Why
did we allow it to happen? Why don’t we provide better social services for
the poor? What is the matter with us?
I don’t have the answers, and anyway it is beyond the scope of this essay to
provide them. But I keep asking the questions, and someday I might begin to
understand. In the meantime, I continue to hope that, like Ebenezer Scrooge,
the United States will come to its senses and learn the art of giving. It
will unclench its bony old hands and dig deep within its pockets. If that
day should happen, I can imagine the collective sigh of relief and the
resounding laugh that comes when this great but flawed country throws off
the shackles of stinginess and breaths the fresh air of generosity.
