Chapter 3
FAMILY IS ANOTHER NAME FOR TEAM.
My Daddy has always been quite the family man. His actions have spoken so loudly over the years, that his words were only a confirmation of his lessons. Daddy worked for Carolina Telephone Company for over 30 years. He is the master salesman. His career required him to travel quite a bit throughout eastern NC. I never remembered feeling like I was missing something because he had to travel to see his clients. He and mama were a team and agreed to work their plan of raising three girls. I remember hearing them talking about the upcoming week and what would be involved in “making it work” that week. We all had chores around the house and farm; everything from cleaning bathrooms, sweeping out the garage to mowing grass and picking up pinecones. I now realize how important it was to make sure we all had completed our chores to make the plan work. Some of the highlights of growing up were the family trips. Quite often we would pack the horse trailer and head to the NC mountains for a long weekend. We would camp and then ride all day the next day. When I say all day, I mean 8-9 hours a day. We had to literally peel ourselves off the saddle when we arrived back at camp. Oh, the conversations on the trails and just being together is something I will never forget. And, then our family trip to Disney World was an interesting game plan. Daddy asked all three girls to sit down at the kitchen table. We had a very important decision to make as a team. We could either take the Suburban and stay in a basic motel when we got to Florida or we could drive the Chevette and stay in a very nice hotel on the Disney World grounds. Can you imagine which option we took? We didn’t care how cramped we were getting there; we just wanted to be in “high cotton” when we got there.
Lessons
1. Teamwork makes family fun.
2. What you help to create, you support.
3. You never know when you are learning another aspect of being a team player.
4. As long as everyone pulls their load, the team works smoothly.