Difficult Simple

Fred Rogers has been a friend of mine since before I really understood was a friend was. Sure, he and I never met face-to-face, but he visited with me every day during the week and he’s still around when I need him. He’s taught me a lot and he could teach me still more if I could learn to quiet myself enough to listen.

People make fun of Fred and I suppose that’s their right, though it doesn’t seem quite fair. Fred’s an easy target, what with his funny Pennsylvania accent, his sweaters his mother knitted and his old-fashioned sneakers. I suspect some folks are uncomfortable with his earnestness and his honesty and his very apparent goodness. It can be intimidating, I know, because sometimes I feel the same way about Fred, like I’m not even a good enough person to be his friend.

But as Fred would tell me, everyone makes the day a special day just by being who they are. That means faults and all. Fred didn’t believe that people should never be sad or never be angry. “Confronting our feelings and giving them appropriate expression always takes strength, not weakness,” he said. “It takes strength to acknowledge our anger, and sometimes more strength yet to curb the aggressive urges anger may bring and to channel them into nonviolent outlets. It takes strength to face our sadness and to grieve and to let our grief and our anger flow in tears when they need to. It takes strength to talk about our feelings and to reach out for help and comfort when we need it.”

Some days I think to myself, “This is what Fred would do,” and I feel good about that thing. Other times I know what I’m doing isn’t what Fred would do and I try to correct myself. It doesn’t always work, but I think it would make Fred happy to know that he’s given me an example to live by, even if I fail and fail again to achieve that particular height.

I don’t always wake my son in the morning, but when I do I open up the curtains to let the sunshine in and I sing “You Are Special.” My son, even though he wakes as soon as the song starts, lies very still with his eyes closed, and when I’m done he says, “That’s a good song, Dad.” He knows it’s a song Fred wrote — though Fred is Mister Rogers to him — but it becomes our special bond on those mornings. My son has Asperger Syndrome, so sometimes it’s difficult for him to express his feelings, but when he says “good song,” I know he’s saying “I love you” in a certain way. I think that would make Fred happy, too.

According to my friend Amy Hollingsworth in her book, The Simple Faith of Mister Rogers, Fred believed that people who died could help the living sort through their problems. Some folks don’t know that Fred was actually Reverend Rogers, and that he had a deep and abiding personal faith. That said, I tend to believe that Fred was right about being able to cross the line between life and death and touch someone when it’s needed. I can think of one instance in particular when I felt Fred directly. Amy writes about that — and me, albeit briefly — in her new book, Gifts of Passage. I could tell you all about it, but I don’t want to spoil the story. And you can dig around in the archives to find it, if you really want to read about it now.

In a more material sense, though, Fred’s help passes through the veil of death on television every day, across the United States and around the world. That’s why I say Fred is my friend, even though he died in 2003. A living, breathing, caring man speaks to children and adults alike and it doesn’t matter that he’s no longer with us because he is still with us.