Hero vs. Role Model

When I was a little girl I idolized my grandmother. I guess it sounds silly but I really saw her as an extraordinary person. She was widowed at a young age with nine children. My father was ten when he lost his father. Along with being placed in this difficult situation she was a model in her younger years and starred on her own radio show when she was a teen. With a repertoire of over 200 original songs she was an accomplished piano prodigy. She learned on her own how to play the piano when she was three years old. She even had a Hollywood screen test but never pursued a career in film because she decided instead to have a family. A few of her songs were so popular they played on the radio and one was even bought by a big name singer.

As a young girl this kind of success in life seemed staggering. For a woman, alone in the world, to accomplish so much was nothing short of amazing. As a teenager who grew into adulthood early through marrying young, I wished an hoped that I could be like her. That I would be able to do things that people saw as exceptional. Write a novel or get an alluring career in a well respected job market. As I had my children and quit working I saw so much of what I wanted to be slip away. Then I was introduced to another extraordinary woman.

This woman was not regionally famous like my grandmother but well respected by all who knew her. She too was a widow at a young age but didn't choose to raise her children alone, she remarried. Also gifted in music she taught piano and organ for many years. When given the chance to do something in her free time she read, quite extensively anything she could get her hands on. By all worldly standards she could be seen as a very good, ordinary person. The truth is though that she is far from ordinary and won my respect in far greater amounts than even my own grandmother did. She is my husbands grandmother.

From birth she was born with a problem with her foot and needed years of surgery and corrective medical care to fix this problem. At the age of two her father left her mother and her and she never got to know him, in this life anyway. Soon after her father left, her mother was diagnosed with schizophrenia. She was bounced from home to home of relative after relative. Growing up disjointed and without a real sense of home she was blessed in her young adult years to meet a wonderful man who provided a home and family for her, the first she had ever really known. When he died you would think that would be it. Being raised in such a forlorn way and then to experience the devastating loss of the only family she ever had...it is truly amazing that she found strength to go on. But she did and she remarried a man who had experienced as much sadness and loss as even she had. They had another child together and are still married today.

It is amazing that a woman with such a life could emerge near the end of it with any smile on her face or spring in her step, but JoAnn Taylor did. This would be enough to admire her, but she is so much more than someone who has overcome odds.

I started realizing early on in my realtionship with this woman that when I left from a visit with her I was very happy. Not only happy but I left feeling as if I was an extraordinary person. Now with most individuals who make you feel good about yourself the gateway is always flattery, whether false or geniune that is the main avenue to enhance somebodys self esteem. Well this just wasn't the case with JoAnn.

I would look back over the conversations that I would have with her and there was one common thread. She was constructively criticizing me. Someone who can help you to see your flaws in a way that actually builds you up is extremely rare. I would venture to say I have never known or heard of another person who can accomplish this. She has a tremendous gift of charity, the ability to see in everyone at the same time every good thing about them. Never in any way tearing anyone down, but reminding you about what is good about others without suggesting you might be lacking in charity yourself.

I asked her about this gift the other day, she cried and thanked me for my kindness and said it was no gift whatsoever but the ability to understand others because she had been there. Empathy, in a word. But the most amazing thing about this woman is that even if she hasn't been in every situation possible, she lends her experience to these situations and gives true empathy anyway.

Growing up I always wanted to be somebody that many people saw as exceptional. What I never realized is that those people are seen exceptional in a superficial way, because it relates little to them on a personal level. Now my mind has changed. I believe that what I truly want out of life is to be seen by someone as exceptional on a deeply personal level. To be the kind of person who makes others better in a quiet loving way is success on such a more monumental scale that someone who does "great" things in the eyes of the world.

Don't get me wrong, I still admire and look up to my grandmother as a wonderful role model for worldly things I still desire to accomplish. But I believe my ultimate hero is someone who I want to be like on a personal level. Because I believe at the end of my life if I am at all like her I will feel I've lived a life worth living.