The Everyday Hero

Tom Hanks is the kind of actor labeled as "everyman." He's the kind of actor who appeals to men and women, with whom anyone can identify in some way, similar to the way Jimmy Stewart was for a previous generation. What is heroic about the characters these men played is not their extraordinariness, but the way in which in mostly ordinary circumstances they seemed to survive and thrive. Among women actors, I think of Helen Hunt in her role as a mother/waitress in "As Good as it Gets." These characters make us think, "I hope I could be like that." Just ordinary, everyday heroes.

I acknowledge the everyday hero. The woman who gets up each day and stirs up her three sons and gets them all ready for school, making sure they get their breakfast eaten and their teeth brushed. There are enough stories told about negligent moms, so how about some kudos for the mom who perseveres through the never-ending loads of laundry, stacks of dishes, and refereeing constant sibling squabbles.

Let's hear it for the everyday hero. The father whose wife has decided her personal choices and freedom are more important than her children, leaving them to his care. I watch as he juggles the demands of working full-time while ferrying his children to daycare, or to grandma's, or to the doctor's office, or to piano lessons and dance and soccer . . . And cleaning up the house every night after the kids are in bed.

There is the grandmother who never anticipated raising her grandchildren, but when her own daughter dumps them on the doorstep and says, "I need you to take care of them for a while," and then disappears, what would you do? Well, the everyday heroic grandmother starts all over again, raising a new family, taking too much of the blame for her daughter's failures, and trying to do a better job this go 'round. She may be 65, or 75, with less energy than she once had, but these are children, after all, and they need love and care. So, she does the hard thing, the right thing, and takes up where she left off a generation before, God bless her.

Everyday heroes . . . they're sitting beside you in the pew, or at the restaurant. They don't seem extraordinary. The woman working a second job (which she hates more than her first job, which she also hates) so she can pay for her child's college education. The man who grinds his teeth through another awful day answering to a bully of a boss. Why does he put up with it? Because he has a family to support and that's more important to him than contentment in his work.

If you don't think these people I've described are heroic, then I think your perspective has been distorted by too many comic book or video game characters. Perhaps there is nothing more heroic than the person who you can count on, everyday, to do the right thing, to do the caring thing, to be there. Everyday heroes, who consistently put the needs of others ahead of their own, who love their neighbor as they love themselves. . . rather than just themselves.

I salute you everyday heroes. Tom Hanks or Helen Hunt would be fortunate to play your role.