State Farm - Don Roberts

I have been a proud customer of State Farm for a long time -- over ten years. Proud because I choose to go with a great company instead of a cheap company. I'm also proud of the people who represent State Farm here in Monroe -- Don Roberts and Ceil Kelly (and the rest of Don’s terrific team). A few years ago, I lost my engagement ring -- I had handed it to my husband when I went in for spinal surgery, but only an hour later, my husband Tommy had a massive heart attack in the waiting room.

For a young couple, this was beyond devastating. Over the next few weeks, we were focused on Tom's recovery and what this all would mean in our lives, and somehow my ring just never turned up. When Ceil called to see how we were and ask if she could help us in any way (just as a neighbor and friend), I mentioned the additional sorrow about the lost engagement ring. Well, Ceil swung into professional mode in TWO seconds and said that she thought my ring was covered for loss under our homeowners policy. You can guess the end of this story, we were able to replace the ring, and more importantly it continues to represent a beautiful young marriage between two very lucky people. How would anyone ever leave that team or State Farm?

Anyway, I wrote a great article for the State Farm Magazine today, and I thought all my lifeinmonroeNY readers might appreciate it – especially if they need to find a better way to protect their homes and families.

I recently left a high-paying job to pursue my life-long dream of being a freelance writer. As you can imagine, many sacrifices have gone on in my home to support this choice. To begin with, luxuries like great restaurants, new outfits and the vacation we were considering went out the window; next went some of the more basic things like my gym membership and manicures. (I have opted to run around the lake in my hometown every day and to simply keep my nails cut short – not easy for a girlie girl like me). Finally, we have actually hit a point where we have to change what kind of groceries we buy and opt out of some cable TV services.

I am left with two profound questions to ponder day after day. One, Is my dream worth the lifestyle changes it has forced upon my family? (Yep, without a doubt – the wife and mother in this home is so happy and so fulfilled that no one around us would dream of sending me back to investment banking in New York City.) The second question is actually more difficult and it takes a quick financial audit to answer every month – especially while I build my client base and make my freelance business more profitable.

It is this: What are we willing (and NOT willing) to edit or remove from our new lives.

State Farm is always at the top of the things that we are simply not willing to change.

I will do a lot of things to save money – after all, I am the mother in this home – and the one with the dream. I will run and hike instead of go to the gym. I will be enormously creative with pasta dinners and discover the magic hidden inside the ever-inexpensive hard-boiled egg. I will clip coupons and mow the lawn myself. I even sold a car to lose a car payment and bought myself a 1988 Dodge Aries K car with no power steering or air conditioning. (This same car even caused my daughter to ask what those hook things on the door were for, to which I blushed and answered, “They roll up the windows, honey.”)

But change my insurance? No way. Saving $300 a year to switch to something represented by a lizard or a caveman? Nope, not me. And what is $300 anyway? Quite literally, it is $25 a month. For an extra $25 a month, I have the profound knowledge that a great company and a great, local guy (Don Roberts in our case) stand on a line with my family every day. Together, they literally stand on the line between us and catastrophe.

They protect us financially in case the life-altering events we all hope will never happen do, somehow, come to pass. They insure my home from things that happen to people every day, like a fire or a robbery. They insure our cars and the people in them from accidents and injury. Finally, they insure the every member of my household in case one of us should pass away. Now I personally plan to live a long and healthy life, but knowing every single day that our good choice to stay with State Farm protects my child and would provide her with the one gift I could leave behind – the chance at the future I would wish for her – well, that’s something I’m not willing to “bargain” with.

State Farm is my good neighbor. It is the one bill that I can honestly feel good about every month. So a special “THANKS” to all of you who work every day to build and offer a great company and great products.

768 Union Street

I am standing on the worn metal footstool that has a seat that lifts so as to double for a chair when there’s too much company. I am standing, sweating, high up on this footstool. I am cleaning the top of the brown metal hood to my Grandmother’s stove. It is greasy and dusty back here, and I kick myself for not cleaning it more often. I take down the four or five nick nacks and put them in a pail of soapy warm water. The green statue with the orange hair (no doubt someone’s St. Patrick’s Day gift from long ago.) The salt and pepper shakers in the stand that double as a cork screw and church key (Grama Be’s old word for bottle opener), a ceramic bank for change that is shaped like a big mushroom house. The paint is chipped on the spotted mushroom and the plug to the bank has long since dried up and fallen out. If you shake it you can hear one old penny stuck somewhere inside, never to buy a wad of Bazooka or be called good luck on the street.

It is hot today. The apartment is like an oven under the tarpaper black roof, baking us. I open the dumbwaiter and put away the baking pans from the drain and fill the pitcher and water the plants hanging in the small window over the kitchen table, water leaking onto the window sill. Be is in the dining room, playing solitaire and having coffee. It is still early. She comes into the kitchen and mixes boiling water into her instant apple and cinnamon flavored oatmeal. I hug her skinny frame from behind, careful not to break her.

PIne Tree Elementary

If you're lucky enough to have a kid who goes to Pine Tree in Monroe, you could probably write this blog yourself. When I was about five years old, I started my education in Pine Tree. That was before the population exploded here in Monroe. The school not only went from Kindergarten all the way through 6th grade, but we also had enough room to host "the Harriman kids" in another wing.

I probably learned 99% of everything I would ever need to know by the time I left Pine Tree. I learned about kindness, and I learned that most people I would meet in life would find my kindness to be the equivalent of weakness. I learned that boys did not want girls on their baseball teams, and what you wore would often dictate people's opinion of you. (As adults, slip in "what you drive" and it's a perfect fit.) ...I drive a 1988 Dodge Aries K car, and I carry a $27 purse purchased way back when K Mart was still our main department store. The truth is that the best lesson I learned in Pine Tree was that I was an exceptional and uncommon young woman. That I was self-deprecatory to a fault and way too sensitive. That my sense of humor was very intellectual, and that I talked too much around new people (a nervous habit).

No, I'm wrong... There was a better lesson than all those things. I learned that on the written page, I could create magic. Carol Barry told me that when I was eleven-years old. It became the core of my ability to find peace. I never forgot Carol Barry. She asked me to write and help edit the Pine Tree Pitch from the very first issue they ever put out. Between her warmth and John Warbrick's stern encouragement, I managed to leave Pine Tree with the only thing I would need to survive some pretty tough times ahead: A full pen.

There have been times, years later, that I would stand on the subway platform in Manhattan, paralyzed as trains would race by in every direction. I would be writing, leaned against a support beam, on the back of some garbage scrap paper I found on a random bench. I have been published, and I have been rejected. But I have never been alone. My pen is my peace and my salvation. It is, as Carol Barry promised me, a silent friend through all things.

It is a lifetime later, and my own little girl walks those same halls. She eats in the same cafeteria and borrows books from the same library. It is, in many ways, bizarre to me. Have thirty-five years really gone by so quickly? I see her at certain angles or hear her be much too sensitive to life, and I can see myself through the mirror of time. She is gifted not to talk too much though -- thank Heaven. She is also gifted to have that magical teacher who finds each kid a treasure and obviously loves her vocation.

Teachers like John and Carol somehow unearth the brilliance in every student that goes through their classrooms. They build futures and unearth once-in-a-lifetime gems. If you don't live in Monroe and your kids don't go to Pine Tree, well quite simply, you should move.

In gratitude and peace, and in memory of my good friend, Carol Barry,
A lifetime later, I remain, Mary Vetell


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