A million years ago (or perhaps 40) I was seven. It was this same day, the Monday of Labor Day weekend, and my family was at Rehoboth Beach at our family cottage, just as we were for so many Labor Days of all those many seven years of my childhood thus far.
The television was on, of course, and as was a tradition, as far as traditions could go when you are seven and have been alive for only so long, I was on the couch watching all 18 broadcast hours of the Jerry Lewis Telethon with my beloved Nana. She knew every single entertainer that Jerry invited to the stage and, by that time in my life, I was expected to also know at least something of importance about each entertainer as well. Nana was big on knowing "something of importance". Many years later, nine to be exact, when I would become the youngest reporter for our newspaper with my own weekly column, it was Nana who would insist that my articles would be of no interest at all to anyone if I didn't share "something of importance" about whatever and whomever I was writing. Surely, if I was writing about it, there was "something of importance" worth sharing. If not, why bother? That was the wisdom my Nana shared.
She also insisted that while it was all well and good to sit on our behinds and watch all those entertainers sing and dance and tell jokes for Jerry and his kids and proffer up large checks, it would be much better if I went out and collected money for the kids myself. Didn't I think so, Jennifer? I was lucky, damn lucky, to be a healthy child, she reminded me and there were kids right there on the television who were not nearly as lucky as I. Do it for Jerry and his kids, she said. Go do it. Because you can!
So, I did. Just that.
I made a sign. Spare change for Jerry's Kids! I got an old coffee can from the kitchen at the family beach cottage. I walked the seven or so blocks to the center of the boardwalk and stood, for the rest of that Monday, that Labor Day, in my purple and gold Speedo swimsuit and bare sandy feet under the shadow of the huge Dolle's Salt Water Taffy Sign.
I've never been a shy person and I certainly was not a shy child and I pestered every single person on that boardwalk that afternoon. Every.single.one. I was a child on a mission. Determined to make the difference for Jerry and his kids. So that when Ed McMahon yelled TIPPANEE and those numbers rolled, Jerry would have to PAINT an extra number on the board! Yes, that was my goal. I didn't want just $100 or even a $1,000. I was the child who dreamed of millions. From passersby on the boardwalk and the spare change in their pockets. On a Monday. In September. In Delaware.
I never said I wasn't delusional. It obviously started very early.
Still, my coffee can was filled. With love and spare change and one and ten and twenty dollar bills. I refused to leave until my father came looking for me and dragged me and my cardboard sign and my coffee can of hope home.
$371.45
That's what I collected that day. I remember calling it in to the folks who were taking donations at what must have been our local television station. Of course I thought, at the time, that I was calling the very studio where Jerry Lewis himself was standing and that he might even answer the phone. But instead I spoke to a kind man who took my information and thanked me for my donation. I didn't get to tell him how I'd spent the day asking strangers for their spare change. He didn't ask me. Why would he? He was just a volunteer, too.
I started spending my summers on the back of a special pony shortly after that and my Labor Days may have been spent at our family beach cottage with my Nana and Jerry Lewis, but it was always after a day spent jumping over jumps at a horse show and collecting my own blue ribbons and not with a coffee can under the Dolles Taffy sign. Eventually, my Nana died. The family beach house, her beach house, was sold. Our family shattered and splintered and Labor Day in Rehoboth felt like a faded Polaroid from some other child's happy lifetime.
Still, some hallowed traditions go on. Jerry Lewis is still gathering his cast of friends and special family each year, each Labor Day weekend, to raise millions of dollars for Muscular Dystrophy research and support. It never ceases to amaze me what an awesome and generous heart that man has for his kids.
And as the calendar rolls onward, as that Labor Day telethon returns again each year, I am always gently reminded of my Nana, to always be grateful that I am healthy, and that each and every one of us has something of importance to give. We all do. We just have to open our hearts and truly give.
