Gratitudes

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Gratitudes is a blog begun during the 2020 pandemic to highlight the daily compassion, kindnesses, mutuality, and bright hope that shines in dark times. Together apart.

Articles

Not Much

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All I was doing was taking a few moments to converse, to listen a bit: just simple, friendly exchanges like any other on my mail carrier’s route.  Edna was an older woman, perhaps eighty, who always met me on her front walk midway between her open doorway and the sidewalk; I supposed she was waiting each morning for my arrival.  I knew her husband’s passing had been recent because I hadn’t seen him for several months, and his Social Security and Veteran’s Affairs checks began coming in her name instead.  When I first noticed, it was early spring. 

She was a little bent, wore a powder-blue housecoat she clenched to her chest in one fist and slippers; I could see through her cotton-candy cap of hair to her skull.  Her lips regularly trembled, which I passed off to age.  After I handed her the daily packet of mail, mostly flyers, I’d ask how she was doing, and then we’d exchange pleasantries.  We’d talk about the weather, progress on the new house being built across the street, snippets of local news, the changing seasons.  Generally, no more than five minutes after which I’d say that I’d better be getting on my way, tip my cap, give her shoulder a pat, and head back to the sidewalk.  She never began her return to the house while I was still within sight.  I had no idea how long she stood there afterwards.

Sometimes, she’d let a small mention of her husband creep into our conversations.  How he’d love the new buds on his prized roses that lined the front walk.  How the previous day’s mail had included an invitation to another of his former squadron’s reunions.  How she’d finally donated his old clothes to Goodwill.  Usually random and after brief silences, within no context of whatever we’d been talking about.  I’d nod, then, not say anything much in reply except to let her eyes remain on mine.  Finally, she’d raise another subject, or more often, pause long enough for me to gracefully end our exchange.

A morning came in late May when she was waiting for me with her free hand under the fist that held her robe closed.  When I reached out her mail, she did the same with that other hand.  It held a small bouquet of her husband’s roses, pink and red, the short stems bound by a rubber band

She said, “These are for you.”

I felt my eyes widen as we traded items.  I brought the roses to my nose, inhaled their fragrance, smiled, and said, “Thanks.”

“No, thank you.” She paused.  “I couldn’t have made it through these past few months without our…talks.  Your thoughtfulness has meant the world to me.”

She said nothing more, but just turned and shuffled to her open doorway with her mail.  She went through it, closed the door, gave me a little wave through the glass, then disappeared into the house’s dim and silent interior.

 

Beautiful Accident

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The subway car stops. Doors slide open. A crush of commuters wait for passengers to get out, then scramble for seats or jam themselves into nooks. The last ones grab onto straps and metal bars as the doors slide shut. The car shudders into motion. Tired faces succumb to a shared complacency.

A Portuguese woman with grocery bags balanced on her lap is the first to notice the butterfly flitting above. It is red and green with splashes of sunny yellow. She has been irritated about her son who recently quit school. What’s he going to do now, spend the rest of his life staying out late, doing who knows what? The sight of the butterfly curlicuing in the air startles her. Where did it come from? How on earth did it get into a subway car? The woman quickly crosses herself. Who knows in what direction this life will lead us? It all ends the same anyway. She is seized by an ache of affection for her son and cradles the grocery bags to her bosom.

A young office executive sees the butterfly. His neck chafes against his collar; sweat trickles behind his ears. He has been dreaming about the new temp at his office. Every day this week he found one excuse or another to go up to talk with her, wanting desperately to ask her out, but his nerve always failed him at the last minute. The butterfly’s aimless movements seem to mock his own awkwardness. He nurses a small ugly pleasure at the thought of its entrapment, and yet, it floats freely while he’s wedged between someone’s shoulder and another’s knapsack. If only he could free the words that are wedged between his heart and his brain. He watches the butterfly enviously, longing to capture and give it to the woman of his dreams.

A little girl tries to grab at the butterfly and tugs at her father’s pant leg, whining for him to lift her up closer. Now others are looking up, some gasping, others laughing. A surge of excitement crackles throughout the subway car.

The butterfly, as if sensing it now has a captive audience, displays a unique gracefulness, fluttering haphazardly above their heads or swooping gently among them, its fragile presence inspiring a hushed awe. One woman’s eyes fill with tears as she is reminded of her ailing mother back in Reykjavik. Then a great cheer arises as the butterfly lands momentarily on the orange Mohawk of a scowling Chinese punk rocker, too cool to let on that he feels special.

The train pulls into the next station. The doors open and the butterfly, swept up by a subterranean breeze, flies out the subway car. No one else moves. All eyes follow its zig-zagging ballet over the platform. The doors close and the train jerks forward. Everybody cranes their necks for a last glimpse of the butterfly until, inside the tunnel, the windows darken, reflecting back their fixed expressions.

 

Spring has sprung. Make it count.

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My bio-mom asked me to do something special for her this spring, something her grandkids could remember. She has stage IV metastatic cancer and we are locked down in California, so no one can see one another. Some of my closest friends and I are among those with underlying co-morbidities, too, so I am not going to lie: I am super-cautious and the information/disinformation makes me anxious.

50 out of 50 states have emergency orders, so we all know what it’s like. I have friends and family I haven’t seen in a month, like all of us. We have been sharing through Skype and FaceTime and Zoom, but it just isn’t enough. (But isn’t it interesting that we are all trying just a little harder to be in touch with each other?)

Flouting the rules a little, my son and his new wife had a super-secret, socially-distanced wedding in a meadow in a park this month. Love rules! Also, may privacy rest-in-peace: I was thrilled to see shots of the illicit gathering from neighbors on a Facebook feed (in the image above).

Take a look at the diversity of life shared here: bees and beers, flowers and fauna. These images are from all over the country — from Rhode Island to Colorado to California to Hawaii.

The point is this: I am not on social media. One of the stats I saw recently said, if you have 200 friends, one of those will die in this epidemic. Sobering and somber and not to be taken lightly. But that “200 friends” is a Facebook estimate from 2011. I am sure we all have more IRL connections than that whose lives we should celebrate. My uncle used to say, “You can count your friends on one hand and cut off three fingers.” (How mob boss is that?) But I count my friends by the positive impact they have had interacting in my life, even for a minute.

To make my mom’s and my best friends’ week, and to remind us why we are making these sacrifices and  about the light at the end of the tunnel, I decided to ask friends to do a little non-denominational scavenger hunt. I want to have a visual “stat” about the exponential growth of kindness and human spirit in this difficult time. 

Stones in your way—those news items and letdowns and roadblocks—shouldn’t be distractions. Instead, times of crises should be a moment to remind us that success means learning to forge ahead and accept other paths.

“Everything happens at the time it should.” — R.P.

Thanks for joining in and sharing your images to create this Springtime Photo Quilt: Luke, Kate, Patrick, Lisa, Ellie, Grace, Tom, Natalie, Martie, Gail, Joel, Kim, Lisa, Lucy, Carl, Delsin, Nate, Laura, Carol, Andrea, Joyce, LaWanda and those anonymous contributors. 🙂 I appreciate you taking the time to create something fun here.

 

 

A New Normal

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It has been an eternity since San Francisco shut down March 13. I want to say, “Who knew we would be in a totally different reality?” but it was right there in the news from January onward. I paid no attention, kept going on with my life—rushing from here to there, trying to work multiple gigs (like most urbanites do these days), taking care of family, burning the candle at both ends. Like most.   

I got a little unnerved when I went to the market one day and it was packed, some shelves were bare, and people were eerily quiet.  I had been in Washington, D.C., right after 9/11 and the hair on the back of my neck stood up just like back then. 

And then it was March 16. Shelter-in-place for California. I heard Andrew Cuomo say not to use that phrase because it scares people. He’s right. The first thing I did was panic a little.  Then, I felt a little guilty for not taking COVID-19 more seriously earlier. For some reason, that 1946 prose-poem/confession by German Pastor Martin Niemoller popped into my head and I made a mental revision:  

First it was in Wuhan, and I did not speak out because the Chinese government would deal with it 

Then it traveled to Europe, and I did not speak out because the EU would deal with it 

Then it came to Washington State, and I did not speak out because Jay Inslee would deal with it 

Then it came to California, and I did not speak out because I wasn’t older with co-morbidities 

Then it came for me and there was no room left in ICU. 

And then I felt guilty again. Not for being inattentive this time. For being egocentric. I am around a lot of people that have it harder than me and are a lot tougher. Don’t get me wrong, things are going to be hard for a long time. But it’s boots-on-the-ground time. No matter what any leader did or didn’t do, whether our CDC was late with testing or we failed to pay attention to the news because we are all too exhausted by a presidency that seems to have lasted 300 years, we each had to pull it together. 

Maybe your job is an EMT, on the front lines. Maybe your job is a nurse or doctor, trying to save lives. Maybe you are a construction worker, frantically building hospitals. Maybe you are an engineer, keeping the internet alive. Maybe you are a teacher, staying up late at night to scale your curriculum to online courses. Maybe you are a student, trying to grow and build a better tomorrow.  

Tens of millions of people lost livelihoods in an instant and thousands are losing lives.

Maybe, just maybe, your job is to stay at home and socially distance to stop the spread of the disease that could be deadly to your friend or family or neighbor.  That’s a hell of an important job, too. It has been a hard month for America, but there is also a long road ahead.

 Even though it is a scary time and we sometimes feel alone and afraid, we are not. We are all members of a unique community: The Human Race. We each have to passionately do our own job, like our lives depend on it.  We hope our government comes through, but it shouldn’t matter. It’s up to each of us — individually – to be proud, strong, and moral. To support our communities, no matter how small our job may seem – to sing from Italian balconies or step out of New York apartments to applaud the first responders every night at 7pm.  To buy gift certificates from your favorite restaurants so they will be there when this is all over. For artists, our job is to provide a refuge for people that need a light at the end of the tunnel, to lift our fellow humans up with inspiring stories and anecdotes, gathered from around the globe. To remind Our Human Race why we exist. From every corner, people are reaching out to others and those stories have shone very brightly in a dark time.  

 What made you happy today? I’ll bet it will make someone else smile, too.  

 We are going to try to post some each day, but if we don’t, we’ll have more to share the next day. We want to provide links to helpful articles and charities that are working around the clock. Welcome to the GRATITUDES community.