Humanity

The snow is reluctantly receding: small dirty white piles, like silent reptiles, creeping back into the woods before finally disappearing. Outside it is a rainy Saturday. The temperature, in the high thirties, the rain cold and raw. I’m happy to be perched on a stool in our kitchen next to the wood stove. Bronte lays spread out against the stone hearth exposing her white belly to the heat.

I heave heavy bags of soil, stacks of crinkled peat pots and trays of tiny tomatoes on the cherry counter top. The green leaves wave back and forth beneath the ceiling fan. We have several grow lights illuminating the kitchen, three varieties of tomatoes and a large black tray of early onions basking in their light. In just a few weeks the tomatoes are standing at the height of the lights and it is time to move them to bigger digs.

Paul is working in the garage when I run out to grab soil. He is building tall wood cabinets to stack our wool blankets, yarn and roving, protecting them from the dust of the tablesaw. Glasses pushed on top of his head, he smiles when I run past but, concentrating, doesn’t look up.

I spread newspaper on the counter and use my hands to dig into the soil mix, heaping each peat pot full. Carefully, I lift a plant from the small square it was born in. This one is twins and I have the difficult job of deciding who lives and who doesn’t. At this point just one plant per pot to absorb all nutrients. Often I can’t decide and put the sibling into another pot. Come spring, instead of planting thirty tomatoes in our green house, we end up with fifty.

The grandfather clock in our living room chimes as I work. Normally I enjoy passing time with these kind of tasks, the repetition offering my mind a chance to wander. Not so today.

Driving, I turn on VPR and immediately plunge down the rabbit hole of negativity. One news discussion only slightly better than the first. As I drive along everything looks familiar, the pond, the muddy dirt road, houses of neighbors, but as I listen, nothing feels familiar or safe.

On winter and early spring evenings Paul and I have dinner in front of the fireplace in our living room and often the conversation will turn to the state of things in our world. Paul, who has the most positive life attitudes, is shaken and unsettled. I watch his eyes as he talks and sit quietly. When he stops, he turns toward me as if for an answer to a question that, honestly, has no answer. What I remind him is that there are difficult, even terrible, things that we can’t change. Our response is the only choice we have. Everyone’s lives are filled with difficulty but, in the spaces between, lie joy. Always. Our job is to find that joy and be grateful for that space.

A few weeks ago I drove into the drive up of our bank with a deposit. As the metal arm came out to meet my money I looked up, expecting to see Lisa, my favorite teller, smiling at me.

Our relationship can be qualified as a friendship but I have only ever seen her from the waist up at the drive-thru. Like the grocery clerk or Zena, the postal carrier who appears every day in her black jeep with ZENA emblazoned on the side, our relationship feels one of familiarity rather than extensive knowledge about each other. Interestingly, sometimes it is those relationships that offer us the most freedom to be ourselves and to offer up empathy and kindness.

We may not know each others last names but I know that Lisa’s sister’s family lost their home in a fire two summers ago and that, a year after the tragedy, one of the nieces got married and Lisa’s face was again full of light and joy when talking with me about it. I didn’t know her husband’s name but I knew he drove down to the bank each day to have lunch with her.

At Christmas I slid her in a little wrapped gift and, in return, the next time I banked, a small note came back to me as she smiled thru the window. We didn’t know. But we did.

The first time Lisa wasn’t in the window I thought maybe she had a day off or was ill. The second time I knew something wasn’t right and I leaned out of my truck and pushed the button, asking the teller where Lisa was. She looked at me for a moment and said, “Lisa won’t be here for a few weeks, her husband died suddenly.”

I drove out and immediately into a parking space, stopped the truck, leaned on the steering wheel and began to cry.

For two weeks afterward I drove around doing errands with a note for Lisa in the cup-holder of the truck. One weekday I drove through and Lisa was there. She smiled a fragile smile that clearly was forced. I clutched the note before pushing it through with my money. I watched her see it as she opened the deposit, her eyes filling quickly as she struggled, and I suddenly became uncertain about whether or not I had done the right thing. She thanked me quickly, not meeting my eyes. I knew that looking at me would push her over the cliff that she had just climbed and unsure if she would be able to climb it again. I drove away.

Sitting near the fireplace eating dinner that evening I told Paul about what had happened and that I felt that the string between us all. The thing that would save us would be our humanity: our ability and willingness to reach out and feel what another person is feeling and experience deep compassion.

Lisa may not have seen me cry with her. But she did.