Endless Knots

She helped

Given our predicament, we've been on the receiving end of a great deal of kindness and generosity over the past four months. At the beginning, the kitchen counters were piled high with brownies and chocolate cakes and pies and shortbread. A favorite couple friend sent one of those elaborate fruit arrangements; another brought baked chicken; another ravioli. There was so much food that we had to buy another refrigerator, which served the dual purpose of allowing us to have enough food to serve all the people dropping by and to put out that which they'd brought.

That time has passed for the moment. As a social worker said near the beginning, a crisis only lasts for so long. "Figure four to six weeks," she predicted, and she was right. You can only tolerate that high-pitch of living for so long and then things have to return to some regularity, albeit one that doesn't feel regular with all the medical appointments, trips to the pharmacy, and suchnot.

But then out of the blue (wonder why that expression isn't "out of the black"), long after the initial crazy period has died down, something else happens.

One morning a package arrived with Amy Reece's return address. "You seem to have a book from Amy," Jeff said, handing it to me. It didn't feel like a book because it was soft (in retrospect, I guess it could have been one of those fabric books for the twins, but that didn't occur to me).

Inside something wrapped in turquoise tissue paper and tied with a lime green ribbon, along with a card in the same colors with a lovely personal note. The gift? A silky soft pale green pashmina. I love pashminas, wear them as often as I can, and, as with all women who have them, wish I had one in every color. I didn't have this color and it goes beautifully with a number of pieces I have.

I don't know how Amy knew how much I love pashminas. We've never discussed them. In fact, we've never even met face-to-face. We worked on a project together for Cisco last year, spoke a few times on the phone, clearly liked each other but I never would have expected her to know what was going on with us -- and certainly never expected a gift like this. Somehow she found out and decided to respond this way.

Here's a bit of the note I wrote Amy later that day. It says everything I'm working up to saying here:

We've received many notes, dear Amy, from people we know well and from those whom we hardly know, many of which end with "please let me know what I can do." The words that always come to mind are "find a cure for pancreatic cancer" or, in my more cynical moments, "You want me to not only deal with this but also figure out how to make you feel better about it???" I'm ashamed of those feelings, of course, but they're really there.

Every now and then - and only from our closest friends - something completely unexpected appears that sands off all that meanness in me, takes away a few moments of the pain, and makes the whole experience not worth it exactly but elevated to a level of connectedness that I've rarely experienced.

Such is your gift of kindness, my dear.

Thank you so very much, Sweet Amy. May I blog about this? I want the whole world to know who you are.

So now I'm blogging about it (she didn't object). Again, here's Amy's site. You now know how kind she is and by clicking you'll see how talented.

 

 

Does anyone have $11.25?

It was a scene at New York's Penn Station last Saturday. All the trains were late because of the blizzard to the south. No one was smiling and a lot of people were just standing by the big board with the word "DELAYED" next to most trains' departure times.

An hour late, the Northeast Regional to Boston boarded. People were just taking their seats when a young black man, maybe 25 at most, walked into our car. "Please," he said in a somewhat desperate voice. "Can someone give me $11.25? I've missed three trains already because I'm short. I have to get home. I'm not a bum. Can you please give me $11.25?"

I couldn't quite understand the circumstances but as I fumbled to pull out some money, the man, white, taking the seat across the aisle had already reached into his pocket and given the younger man a $20. "God bless. Thank you," he said and he was off the train.

I wondered about the man across from me for the rest of the ride. He didn't polish his fingernails on his chest as if he'd done something important. He didn't even discuss it with the woman he was traveling with. They just settled in, talking, her working, him reading, a lovely couple perhaps in their early fifties.

Shop at home, change a life

My college roommate, Sylvia, a font of wisdom, has a great saying for her kids: "If you need something, shop at home first." Well, even for those who hate shopping -- or who need something more than Bandaids, we are all bound to do some in the weeks to come.

Here's a way to do it with a kick - an auction (they're running once a month, this one from today through Dec 7) to benefit the Sidney Borum Jr. Health Center (see below for details).

Bling! Brownies! Brady! Babble! (er, the chance to have me speak to your organization)

All good and here's what you're helping:

Located at 130 Boylston St, across from the Boston Common, the Sidney Borum Jr. Health Center opened in 1994 to serve the health care needs of homeless youth and young adults, many of whom engage in unsafe sex with adults in exchange for money, food or a place to sleep. 

The Borum provides primary medical care as well as mental health and substance abuse counseling, HIV counseling, testing and risk reduction reinforcement, as well as other clinical and social services.  Its primary focus is on young people who have been unable to gain acceptance in more traditional health care settings for a variety of reasons, including homelessness and involvement in street life and the sex industry. 

The Borum provides care to HIV positive adolescents and young adults and those who are gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender and, therefore, at risk of not receiving culturally and clinically appropriate services. 

Do I hear $50? $100? $500?

Clever idea. BiddingForGood, which holds auctions for non-profits, is hosting one for Grateful Nation, the online volunteer site associated with Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. BIDMC CEO Paul Levy kicked the auction off this morning on his blog. Purpose of this auction is to raise funds to buy an ultrasound machine for Bowdoin Street Health Center in Boston's Dorchester neighborhood. Placing an ultrasound machine in the health center will allow pregnant women to have their sonograms near where they live, rather than having to travel, often by public transportation, to the hospital itself, which can be a time-consuming journey. Very good cause that I support wholeheartedly, based on recent experiences close to home.

The auction runs for a week and includes about three dozen items ranging from a baseball signed by Luis Tiant (its value is marked "priceless") to a $100 gift card to Mantra Restaurant to an "Inspiring Speech for Your Organization by Monique Doyle Spencer" to, of course, an "Interactive Presentation" by yours truly.

Bid fast! The whole thing's over in a week but if you miss this one, plan ahead for the holidays, as there will be one the first week of each month. And naturally you too can donate an item, a service, a who-knows-what. I've turned my thinker-upper on to figure out what's next from us.

Facebook and the !Kung

Well, not exactly, but this interview ("Where Gifts and Stories Are Crucial to Survival") with Pauline Wiessner, an anthropologist at the University of Utah, is not to be missed. She talks about how the !Kung (click your tongue to say it or listen to Miriam Makeba sing "The Click Song") maintain social connections across distance and time--and how here in the non-!Kung world we imitate them via social conveniences like Facebook.

First point is that distance is no impediment to intimacy if we are willing to keep those we care about close in our hearts through gifts. Reinforces the truth that many of the most generous people are those with ostensibly the least to give.

Second point is the story-telling. By talking about those who are "away," the !Kung keep them in the conversation. Facebook, Wiessner says, is a contemporary example of how we keep those not in view front and center in a different way.

"People who use it [Facebook] say it keeps memories of distant friends alive and it sometimes brings long-lost relationships back home. We all know of people who’ve been 'friended' by old pals from college and former neighbors they’ve lost touch with. When they see pictures of them and read 'sharings' from their Facebook partners, they are reminded of their presence in their lives."

Here are the opening few paragraphs of Claudia Dreifus's enlightening interview with Wiessner. You have to read it. Make sure you go to the end too where one of the !Kung snags a satellite phone and calls Wiessner in Utah, asking her to buy some soccer shoes for their team, which an American documentary filmmaker had promised to send a few years earlier but never had.

Q. ONE OF THE GROUPS YOU STUDY, THE !KUNG PEOPLE OF SOUTHERN AFRICA’S KALAHARI DESERT, ARE NATIVE TO ONE OF THE MOST UNFORGIVING CORNERS OF THE PLANET. HOW DO THEY SURVIVE IN A PLACE OF FREQUENT DROUGHTS, FLOODS AND FAMINE?

A. They have an intricate system of banking their social relationships and calling on them when times get rough. The system is maintained through gift-giving, storytelling and visiting. It works like insurance does in our culture.

I first arrived in the Kalahari in the early 1970s, when the !Kung were still primarily hunter-gatherers. My question then was: how do people without meat on the hoof, grain in the larder and money in the bank survive hard times?

When I was there for about a year, some answers came. There was a heavy rain. The desert plants died and the wild game dispersed. As people grew hungrier, they began telling vivid stories about loved ones who lived as far as 200 kilometers away. They spoke about how they much missed them. Soon people were busily crafting beautiful objects — gifts. Finally, when push came to shove, 150 !Kung began trekking to the encampments of the people they’d been remembering. There they stayed until conditions in their home area improved.

What I’d witnessed was a structured system at play. The Bushmen used the storytelling to keep feelings for distant persons alive. The gifts are their way of telling the receiver, “I’ve held you in my heart.” Over the years, I saw this repeated many, many times. It would turn out that the !Kung spent as much as three months a year visiting “exchange partners,” and this was the key to their survival.

Another one of those random acts

Told to me by a good friend who's struggling:

She went to the dentist for a filling that she'd been putting off because, of course, the price tag on such things is about the same as a couple of good tires. While there, the dentist said, "Gee, you're way overdue for your X-rays," which the woman knew because of the, you know, same aforementioned problem. "I mean you're, like, two years overdue." Sorry, said my friend, no way can I afford that.

Drill, drill, drill, slurp, slurp, and then she heard the dentist whisper to the technician. "Take her X-rays but don't put it on her bill." And thus another person bent the rules to help out someone in need. Very very nice.