Her parents wanted her to get a job. Why? For the same reasons our parents wanted us to get one and we want our kids to get one. To learn some responsibility. To learn the value of hard work. To get some of their own money.
Toni Morrison got a job working as a cleaner for a few hours after school. At first she liked it—liked the two dollars that were her wages, liked that she was earning money she could go squander on fun and contribute to her mother for household needs. But with time, the shine wore off. She didn’t love how she was treated. She didn’t like the increasing demands from the woman she cleaned for.
So she came home one day, complaining to her parents in the kitchen. She thought her father would wrap her in his arms and say, “Oh you poor little thing.” Instead, as she recalled, he set his coffee down and the table and said, “Listen. You don’t live there. You live here. With your people. Go to work. Get your money. And come on home.”
It stunned her, but most of all, it stayed with her. He’d only uttered a few, clipped words. He hadn’t given a speech but she took a lot out of it. As she recalled years later for the New Yorker, the lesson her father was giving her was four-fold:
1. Whatever the work is, do it well—not for the boss but for yourself.
2. You make the job; it doesn’t make you.
3. Your real life is with us, your family.
4. You are not the work you do; you are the person you are.
Not bad, eh? Let’s pass that along to our kids when the opportunity presents itself.
—This newsletter is brought to you by Sundays for Dogs.

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