Back in March of 2020, as the pandemic emergency took hold, life began to shut down. Workers were sent home, stores were shuttered. I was living alone then, a typical Empty-Nester. My sons had set out on their own and although they lived close by, fear prevented much interaction.
Fear prevents much in general.
I was working as a human resource consultant from my dining room table. My primary source of exercise was pacing through the connected rooms of my antique house: dining room to living room to front room to kitchen. The loop totaled 75 steps and during the course of a typical phone call I would make a good 10-15 loops, as I counseled business owners on how to stay solvent and keep employees safe while their businesses tanked financially.
There were some calls that didn’t permit such pacing, like the calls with employees trying to understand how to pay for insurance costs with no income or how to estimate what their husband’s hospital costs might be now that he’s been intubated. Or the update calls from managers on how many of their people had gotten sick and far too often which of them had died.
I was safe, utterly unexposed, gainfully employed, with no young children or elderly parents to have to tend to. Nevertheless this was grueling work that allowed for no easy boundary since I was always home, within easy view of my computer. I would sit down thinking, oh I’ll just finish up this email or notice, only to find myself hours later elbow deep in some report or other.
Days would go by with no face-to-face personal interaction. I would hear occasionally from friends but they had their own families to contend with. My company began to host weekly “Happy Hours” that were discomforting glimpses into the personal dysfunctions of coworkers. The leadership was determined to accentuate the positive, a laudable effort, but one that left many of the staff adrift. We tried to take some care of one another, but obligations of work and family meant that coworkers came a distant third. I myself was guilty of that. Virtual gatherings lost their novelty quickly and with it any sense of intimate interaction. Like so many, I retreated.
Toward the late spring, outside life began to open up tentatively despite many who preferred to remain sheltered in place. Into these contents under pressure, the murder of George Floyd and subsequent protest marches exploded. Neighborhoods began to bloom with Black Lives Matter posters in windows, quotations from Martin Luther King dotting lawns, often against displays of American flags with the white stripe steeped in blue and placards supporting the police.
The summer came thick with humidity and tension. I like so many others felt overwhelmed by anxiety. Becoming so abruptly aware of my own blindness, I with my lofty principles and Quaker platitudes, faced the suffering of my fellow humans feeling helpless to do much of anything worthwhile. I’m a fixer, so fix is what I tried to do from my dining room loop, what I tried to do by attending marches and listening to others experiences and learning.
I was not alone in feeling overpowered by events going on around me, but I did feel very much alone in dealing with my own impotency, the smallness of everything I tried to do. What good was any of it? I value my existence by its usefulness. I felt empty.
One Sunday in an effort to cheer myself, I went to Home Depot to purchase some plants. As a homeowner and American Suburban Dad-wannabe, I take no small pride in my grass and garden. I kibbutz with the other neighborhood lawn experts: what are you using for crabgrass? What’s your secret of that blue in your hydrangeas? That day was gray and humid, promising rain and the store was busy. Because of its warehouse size, people felt more comfortable to wander masked through the aisles and ponder the purchase of new faucets for the bath or maybe a vanity. I gathered my plants and a can of window cleaner and got into the line by the lumber supplies. Behind me were several men, in jean shorts with their masks worn under the nose in protest, purchasing racks of plywood. “There’s supposed to be another ‘march’ tonight so I gotta get the store windows boarded” “Oh yeah, ‘march’ they call it. More like a riot.’ They groused intermittantly.
I stood with my plant and my silence, lost in darkening thoughts.
The cashier was a young guy, tall, broad. He was also Black. He greeted me, scanned my items, took my payment politely. In my brooding, I walked off leaving the small bag with my window cleaner behind.
“Miss!” he called out (and not Ma’am, bless him) “Miss!” He came after me. “You forgot this.”
“Thank you, thank you, I’m so sorry,” I gushed, embarrassed by my spaciness. He smiled down at me behind the mask. “No worries,” he said. ” I got you.” He nodded and returned to the counter.
I returned to my car and sobbed. Ugly crying, tears running, nose running. All because some kid said “I got you” How could he have known what that meant to me at that moment. He did nothing extraordinary or courageous. He didn’t even chase me down into the parking lot. He took a couple of extra steps and was kind. He made the effort, despite whatever the difficulties of his own situation, being surrounded by strangers during a health emergency, to connect with someone that he didn’t know, just another customer, some old white woman whose stance could easily have been that of the plywood men surrounding her. That did not prevent him from performing a kindness, from treating me with respect, from being the person he wants to show himself to be in this world.
That small act altered the trajectory of my day and remains with me to this one, years later. It is always not the grand gesture or all-encompassing mission that makes the difference. A simple act of generosity can be everything to someone in that moment. Those efforts are never worthless, but elevate the giver as much as the receiver, because in those moments we are all recipients of grace. So thank you, Home Depot lumber area employee from 2020. From your one small act came years of gratitude and awareness of the impact we can all so easily have upon one another.
