On Christmas Eve a neighbor called to say they had extra guests for their Hanukkah dinner and ran out of chairs. Within five minutes they saw my grandchildren at their front door, each carrying a dining room chair. Fortunately we didn't need the chairs because we ate in the family room in big overstuffed chairs with me wrapped in a comforter.
I love the New York Times Magazine so my daughter saves them for me. What a bedtime treat. I love Judge John Hodgman's column "The Ethicist." He doesn't offer advice, he delivers justice. The topic could be Bar Trivia, Cat Taxidermy or Office Baking Contests.
But a big surprise to me was a poem I read on Christmas Eve. You know how I feel about civility and how we need it even more desperately these days, at every level of society. It's truly a huge part of my basic faith system. The poem is by Danusha Lameris, poet laureate of Santa Cruz County, California. It's a great reminder for all of us leading into 2020.
SMALL KINDNESSES
I've been thinking about the way, when you walk
down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs
to let you by. Or how strangers still say "bless you"
when someone sneezes, a leftover
from the Bubonic plague. "Don't die," we are saying.
And sometimes when you spill lemons
from your grocery bag, someone else will help you
pick them up. Mostly, we don't want to harm each other.
We want to be handed our cup of coffee hot,
and to say thank you to the person handing it. To smile
at them and for them to smile back. For the waitress
to call us honey when she sets down the bowl of clam chowder,
and for the driver in the red pick-up truck to let us pass.
We have so little of each other, now. So far
from tribe and fire. Only these brief moments of exchange.
What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these
fleeting temples we make together when we say, "Here,
have my seat." "Go ahead - you first." "I like your hat."
Danusha Lameris
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