Tag: caring

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Anybody, Everybody

Alone in a pew, all in black, she could have been anybody.

Granted, in all her long life, Queen Elizabeth II has never gotten to be just “anybody.” That’s part of the package of being British royalty: people may adore you, detest you, gossip about you, or even accuse you of being shape-shifting aliens from another planet … but they will never, ever completely ignore you.

But for that one moment at Prince Philip’s funeral, in that one image circulated around the world, none of it seemed to matter. For that brief moment, the pomp and circumstance subsided into a figure anyone could know. A small woman, long married, newly widowed, the social distancing around her echoing the empty place in her heart and her life.

It could have been any of us. It has been some of us. Painfully familiar, in a world where so much has changed.

I’m not a close royal-watcher. (That was my English grandma Elsie.) I didn’t sit to watch every moment. But I did notice how even online, where the brash and the inappropriate can so easily intrude, the feel at that moment was overwhelmingly … well, kind.

I was relieved to see it.

Every once in a while, I wonder if we’ve forgotten how.

I’m not the only one. A friend sent me a message this week, dismayed at what her adult daughter had been seeing in the not-quite-post-pandemic world. As most of you know, it’s been a little like Rip Van Winkle as more and more people come out of their isolated state and back into a more engaged world. But like sleepy ol’ Rip, some of them didn’t seem to recognize immediately that the world had changed from what they knew, or were too impatient to care.

Maybe you’ve seen what she saw. The folks that expect restaurant service to be just as seamless as before, despite the crowds and precautions. Or perhaps the ones that cut in the self-service grocery lines, outflanking the ones waiting on their “distance dots.” Or other bits where the social gears are sticking instead of clicking.

I know. It’s not easy. Especially in the transition period we’re in, where the light keeps getting closer but at the speed of an inchworm. Many of us have had our shots, many more are on the verge, and we want to be D-O-N-E with this whole business. Back to business as usual.

And as we emerge, it feels more like a report from Mr. Spock instead: “It’s life, Jim, but not as we know it.” Each day, we get small reminders that it’s not going to be completely as it was. Maybe it never truly is … “normal,” after all, is a thing of today, always in motion, redefined by each generation.

But as so much changes, it’s vital that kindness remains.

if any lesson comes out of the pandemic, it has to be that. We’ve seen pain and disruption, adjustment and transformation. We’ve experienced brutal ugliness, heart-stirring courage, and even beauty finding its way out of isolation and into the light. And where we’ve made our best moments, we’ve made them for each other.  

Friends. Neighbors. Strangers united by nothing but a desire to help. That hasn’t been all of us, but it hasn’t been none of us, either. At the darkest, there have been hearts finding ways to help, even  when the hands had to stay six feet apart.

That’s the old truth that our new world has to remember. That it starts with kindness. With caring. With seeing other people as humans that matter, that we need and are needed by.

Like that little old lady in the pew, no one is just “anybody.”

 And that has a certain majesty all its own.

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The Story of Us

It finally happened. I got to see it.

In a word? WOW.

If you’re new to this space, you should probably know that I’m a “Hamilton” fan. And unless you’re new to planet Earth, you’re probably aware that I’ve got a lot of company, including many of us who have yet to beg, borrow or steal our way into “The Room Where It Happens,” also known as a live performance of the Broadway smash.

That changed on Independence Day weekend. In a world where everything’s gone remote, the hip-hop history of the early republic followed suit, jumping feet first into streaming television. For two and a half hours we could see the show as it was on one night in 2016 … you know, back about a million years ago, when masks were something from a Jim Carrey movie?

I jumped in with it. And got hit with several tides at once.

First, of course, was a bit of heartbreak for a personal passion. Thanks to the coronavirus, it’s been so long since we’ve been able to touch live theatre – to see faces play off faces, actors play off audience, the perpetual cycle that creates something unique to the moment yet timeless in the memory. For an amateur actor like myself, to have even the shadow of that was powerful, even while it evoked the yearning for something more.

And then it touched something more subtle.

Watching the faces, you see, means watching reactions. Seeing thoughts and decisions. Having the impact of choices made physical and real.

In a story like this, that’s vital. Because this is a story about stories.

And it’s one that’s achingly relevant to now.

A bit of background: the musical sets up Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton as foils to each other. Burr waits for the right moment; Hamilton tries to create it. Burr is cautious about what he says; Hamilton produces a flood of words at every moment. Burr weighs what his audience wants to hear; Hamilton speaks and writes with brutal honesty.

And yet, at the start, they’re more alike than different. Both are focused principally on themselves. True, Burr is considering how he’ll be perceived now while Hamilton instead looks forward to how he’ll be remembered. But it’s still “all about me.”

Burr rarely gets beyond that. When he finally puts his cards on the table, his aim is simply power for its own sake. To be at the center of the decision-making, regardless of what the decisions wind up being.

Hamilton, in the play, finds the seeds of something more.  Not just because he has something he wants to build. But because he’s reminded – often in painful ways – that his story isn’t just HIS story, that the choices he makes have an impact on others.

That’s a valuable reminder at any time. And especially now.

In a crisis, it’s easy to get caught up in the personal. After all, there’s so much of it. It’s human to feel the blows, to mourn the changes, to chafe at restrictions and scream “When do I get the life that I want back?”

We all feel it. And we know it’s not that easy.

In blizzards, in wildfires, in pandemics, the choices we make for ourselves can make life-or-death differences for others. That’s always the case, really, but a disaster underscores it. A moment’s carelessness can mean a pileup on icy roads, an out-of-control canyon blaze, or, yes, an outbreak that snuffs out lives and livelihoods on an epic scale.

And when we consciously look out for others – that’s when we’re at our best. That’s when we become neighbors and communities. It’s how we recover and build. Not by pushing ahead to what we want or deserve, but by watching for the needs and concerns of others and meeting them, even when it’s inconvenient.

That’s a story worth joining.

I wonder if we can get Lin-Manuel Miranda to write the music?

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Learning to See

I’ve seen the lament for a while now. “Can we please have something in the news that isn’t about COVID-19?”

Be careful what you wish for.

By now, everyone’s heard the name George Floyd. By now, we’ve all had the opportunity to see his final moments. By now, outrage has turned into something more powerful, launching protests and riots across the country.

It’s a rage that has proved stronger than even coronavirus caution. Yes, the virus doesn’t care about justice or race, just opportunities (and sadly, it will be heard). But when you fear that friends and family may be killed now, are being killed now, the fear of what may happen two weeks from now has less power  to hold someone back.

It’s an outbreak of a different sort. An all-too familiar sort.

And like every outbreak, it’s the result of a sickness that has been ignored.

Those  of  us who have the luxury of not confronting racism on a regular basis can find it easy to turn away all together. To decide it’s a problem we’ve solved or at least something on the way out. *We’re* healthy, so this “virus” couldn’t be all that bad, right?

Except we know better. Whether we want to admit it or not.

Anyone remember the dog leash? It was only a few days ago, the black birdwatcher in Central Park who told a white dog-walker to keep her dog on a leash. Her response was to call the police and say she’d been threatened.

Nobody does that if they don’t think they’ll be believed. If they don’t believe the police will be on their side.

Had there not been video, she might have been right.

I’m not going to get drawn into the argument about “not all cops.” Yes, I know a number of good officers and that’s not the point I’m making here. This isn’t just about the bad actors. It’s about the people who looked away, in or out of uniform, until something finally happened that couldn’t be ignored. Who didn’t see the warning signs – even with 18 prior complaints, as with this officer –  or chose not to.

We see what we want to see. But reality doesn’t care what we want.

If we’ve learned nothing else from the Age of Corona, we should have learned that.

We’ve been hearing this for months when it comes to the virus. Be aware. Look for who’s vulnerable and help them. Take steps to protect your neighbor, even when it’s uncomfortable. Don’t create an opportunity for infection to spread.

It hasn’t been easy. But a lot of us have done it. Because even the measures that don’t benefit us individually have a powerful effect when they protect our neighbor. And we’re all somebody’s neighbor.

If all of us look out for all of us, then all of us benefit.

Now it’s time to apply those lessons beyond epidemiology.

When a disease is left unchecked, it spreads. When an evil is left unconfronted, it grows. In both cases, the worst outbreaks come when opportunities to stop it at an earlier stage were ignored.

And the only way we bring both to heel is to see beyond our needs. To look beyond our own comfort. To remember that we’re only as healthy, safe and free as the person next to us.

Even before coronavirus, we knew this. These are ancient reminders, to love our neighbor and lift up those in need. They’re not new … they’re just not easy.

But if we were to follow them – to see, to listen, to truly help – that would be a headline worthy of the front page.

That would be everything we wished for. And more.

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Staying Awake

The last song had been played. The last story had been read. The sheets were turned back, the favorite purse at hand. Bedtime, right?

“NO.”

“Missy, we talked about this. It’s getting late.”

“NO.”

“Look, it’s softball season. Athletes need their rest, right?”

“NO.”

“Sweetie, you at least need to stay in the bedroom, OK?”

I know some of you right now are nodding at this, like members of a club who have just heard the secret knock. Yes, that periodic ritual of parenthood and guardianship, the Bedtime Battle, was well under way. Like many wars, the tactics had become familiar and the ground well-studied, even if the motive for the conflict had been long forgotten.

“Look, we can leave part of the door open, all right? Is it ok if I close half of it tonight?”

Reluctant nod.

Since Missy’s disability makes it hard for her to communicate, it can take a while to pick through the possible causes when this happens. Sometimes it might be a nightmare. Sometimes it’s just a little soreness from the day’s activity, with some ibuprofen working wonders. Sometimes, all you can do is chalk it up to a disturbance in the Force and do the best you can.

This time, a late-night grocery trip might have been to blame – a time when Missy had woken up while I was still out. It would explain the worry when I started to get out of sight of her door, anyway.

Sigh.

You know, sleeping on a hallway floor can get kind of comfortable after a while?

***

There are a lot of “dad duties” that never make it on the official list.

We all know the stereotypes, right? Good at fixing things. Handy at yard work. Grill master. Voice of discipline when necessary. Ready and enable to initiate others into the mysteries of professional sports fandom.

It’s been shown in sitcoms, plastered on Father’s Day cards, wedged into the back of our minds. And, yeah, some folks do fit the classic resume. (As a kid, I believed – with some justice – that my Dad could fix anything.)

But many of us don’t. And the funny thing is, those aren’t even the core competencies.

It’s not about being manly. It’s about being there.

It’s the shared struggle over math homework at 10 p.m. (Thanks, Dad.)

It’s the off-key middle school choir concerts attended, or the grade-school baseball games where bat and ball have only a passing acquaintance with each other.

It’s the times when you sit on the phone for two minutes waiting for the other caller to say “Hello?”

It’s time together wherever it has to be found – a story, a movie, a puzzle, a game. It’s taking temperatures, and holding hands. And yeah, sometimes it’s outright arguments and struggles to understand.

But if you’re there, however you can be … if you care, and can share it … if you’re awake to the needs and responsibilities involved …  then you’re doing it right, even if you can’t tell a monkey wrench from Curious George.

Thing is, these aren’t just dad duties. They’re mom duties, or cousin duties, or guardian duties, or whoever has the ability to step into that space and be the person that’s needed. Whoever has found themselves in that wonderful and terrifying role of “parent,” even if they don’t share a single strand of DNA.

If you’re there – if you care – if you’re building and not breaking, helping and not harming – then you’re doing it right. And bless you for it.

Take a breath. Rest easy.

And if you’re resting on the hall carpet,  the right pillow makes a world of difference.

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Behind the Words

Every once in a while, someone who’s new to this column will ask me what it’s about. My usual response is “It’s about 600 words, give or take.”

Ba-dum-bum.

OK, it’s a wiseguy answer. But not a wrong one. Over the years, this column has dealt with puns and politics, sports and sorrow, news of the weird and news from home. Many of the most popular have been about family – my wife Heather, our disabled ward Missy, our cousins and nieces and nephews and pets.

If there’s been one consistent theme, though – aside from my beating my forehead against the monitor until the words come pouring out – it’s that this column is about all of you.

Allow me to explain.

Long ago, I dwelt in a fabled land known as southwest Kansas, where the distances are vast and the people few. Within this land, there dwelt a sage known as Ava Betz, copy editor for The Garden City Telegram. And after I wrote my first weekly column ever as a newspaper reporter – a light piece on the beauty of words – it was Ava who came up to me to compliment me and pass on a bit of advice.

“You can write anything you want,” she told me, “but no navel gazing. Got it?”

“Got it.” And I did.

Writers spend a lot of time in their own head. It can be very tempting to not come out again – to cut out the rest of the world and make it all about ME, spending paragraph after paragraph on the beauty of your own belly button lint (figuratively speaking) without a thought to why anyone else in the world should care about your deathless prose.

But other people matter.

And “why should anyone care?” is the most vital question any writer can ask.

Let me revise that. It’s the most vital question any human being can ask.

Writers need readers. And writers who never give a moment’s thought to the readers’ world haven’t created a story. At best, they’ve created a still life, objects without motion, references without resonance. At worst, they’re posing in a mirror.

People need people. And people who never give a moment’s though to the other lives around them pass through an empty world – or worse, create one. Neighbors without empathy are just folks who happen to live nearby. Leadership without reflection is just preening, or maybe even bullying. Failing to recognize someone else’s pain is to not truly understand your own.

That’s one of the secrets that shouldn’t be so secret. We learn ourselves better when we see others more clearly. When we reach out, something also reaches in.

And together, we create a story worth telling.

It sounds easy. It isn’t. It means taking time to consider other perspectives and other hearts, and maybe having your own broken a few times. C.S. Lewis once wrote that “To love at all is to be vulnerable,” and when you try to find the things that tie your soul to another’s, you are committing an act of love. Leaving yourself vulnerable.

But you’re also making the world just a little closer. And yourself a little more alive.

In acting, a performer is sometimes derided as “only playing himself.” Actors know the truth – that every actor plays themselves, but the most limited ones don’t have enough self to play. You stretch yourself by breaking out of familiar patterns and experiencing those around you. By caring.

This is a space where we come to care. This column. This community. This world.

That’s what it’s about.

And if it’s also about 600 words – well, that’s a bonus.

You bet your belly button.

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Touching Opportunity

This week, a lot of people have taken a chance – an Opportunity, if you will – to look to the heavens and thank the little robot that could.

The story’s well-known by now. How the planned mission of the Mars rover Opportunity was for 90 days. How, like other rovers before it, it kept going long past its expiration date – by more than 14 years, in fact.

And now, like other rovers before it, it’s gone silent. Nothing had been heard from it since last June, when a Martian dust storm covered its solar cells. After hoping that another wind would clear the rover and allow it to recharge, NASA finally declared Opportunity “dead.”

“The last message they received was basically ‘My battery is low and it’s getting dark,’” science writer Jacob Margolis tweeted. The words were Margolis’s poetic interpretation of the June signal, not a literal sentence from Opportunity. But the “last words” added an extra touch of heartbreak to the moment, turning it from the shutdown of a machine to the silencing of a beloved explorer.

Does that sound silly? I don’t see why.

Caring for things is what we do. Even when they can’t care back.

We read books or watch movies and anguish over the fate of people who never existed, except in our minds.

We name cars and say goodbye to childhood homes, so interwoven with our lives that we can’t imagine their absence.

We become part of a story. We invest a little, or a lot, of ourselves in it. And when a good story ends, it touches us. It leaves us a little different for the experience.

But with a good story, there’s always one chapter left, even after the volume is closed. The one that we write.

Having taken this story into our hearts, what do we do with it?

That, too, may sound a little odd. Most of us, after the age of six, don’t try to don a cape and cowl and fight evil on the streets after watching a superhero movie. One does not simply walk into Mordor after reading or viewing The Lord of the Rings, or search crowds for Rhett Butler after completing Gone With The Wind, or build up a high-tech loadout after reading Tom Clancy. (OK, there may be some exceptions on that last one.)

But we do take Lessons. Inspiration. Examples. Even hope. The stories we invest in, the people and experiences we treasure, all teach us something. And maybe even inspire us to a next step.

It might be the simple reassurance that, even if they can’t fly or shoot energy beams, heroes may already be among us, looking just like you and me – could maybe even be you and me.

It may be the reminder that fighting evil is a hard and grueling task, but that even small actions can add up to huge differences, even without the aid of a magic ring or an Elvish sword.

It can even be the lesson, taught by a machine of our own making, that we can be capable of so much more than we believe. That we can keep going beyond everyone’s expectations, even our own.

Maybe even far enough to one day thank Opportunity in person.

The skies don’t have to be the limit. The story can go where we choose to take it, both inside us and beyond us. That’s inspiring to me as a writer, as a space geek, and even as a human being.

Care. Follow where it takes you. Write the next story.

After all, Opportunity is where we choose to find it.

 

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A Simple Act

Breathe deep. You’ve almost made it again.

After Tuesday, the ads are over. The junk mail can stop. The robocalls and surveys can find another topic for a while (and surely will). And with Daylight Savings over, you’ve even got your lost sleep back so you can recover your bearings.

But first, there’s a small job to left to do.

And small as it is, a lot of us won’t do it.

Every couple of years, a lot of time and money gets spent on “Get Out the Vote” campaigns. And every couple of years, the effect is … variable, if you want to say it kindly. In a good year, 60 percent of us may show up to the polls. In a bad year, even 40 percent may look like an impossible dream.

And in a midterm election, when there’s no presidential candidate at the top of the ticket, the bad years can be very bad indeed.

Everyone with a cause or a candidate wants to change that, of course – at least, for the folks who support THEM or who haven’t decided yet. And so, a lot of tactics get tried:

 

Eat Your Spinach – “Voting is good for you! It’s your duty! And you’re not leaving this dinner table until you’re done!”

Ooh, Shiny! – “Who wouldn’t want this cool sticker of the American flag? It’s the perfect accent to every outfit!”

What About Those Guys? – “If you don’t, (fill in least favorite person) will – and you know what he’s like!”

Buy Now! – “It couldn’t be easier! We’ll bring the ballot right to you! You drop it in the mail! Or even bring it to the curb! Heck, we’ll even throw in this lovely set of steak knives ABSOLUTELY FREE!” (Disclaimer: there are no steak knives.)

Be Emotional  – “People died to give you this vote. And you want to throw it away? I bet you shot Bambi’s mom, too.”

Be Practical – “These are the elections that count. No electoral college hoo-hah getting in the way, just your voice and mine. You wanna complain? Here’s your ticket.”

Be Really Practical – “You know those phone calls and doorbell ringers you’re sick of? You vote, and they magically go away. It’s like something out of Harry Potter.”

 

As I said, the results are mixed. Some tactics may help (especially clearing away the logistical barriers), but none is a magic bullet cure-all. And the reason is simple.

At its heart, voting is an act of caring.

It’s a small act of caring, true. Voting is to civic engagement what a wedding is to a good marriage – a first step on the road that’s often mistaken for the end of the race. It’s a commitment that says what kind of society you want to live in.  What issues and people are important to you. Who gets helped and who gets hurt.

It’s not just an abstract number shuffle. It’s a decision that changes more lives than the lottery and for a longer period. Sometimes the results can seem prosaic – jobs created or lost, standards created or repealed, projects begun or abandoned. But at the root are faces –a decision of who will be seen as a neighbor and who as a stranger, who will be greeted with open arms and who with doubled fists.

A single step. A first step. Even an easy one.

And if the caring isn’t there, even the easy step is too hard. It gets forgotten. Or cynically bypassed. Or maybe worst of all, done without any thought at all, just a tick of the box to get it over with. Boosting the turnout numbers, yes, but adding nothing to the decision.

Would you want an employee or a co-worker who approaches their job that way?

It can be good that everyone votes. But it’s vital that everyone who votes, cares.

Take the time. Spend the thought. Invest the heart.

Once again, there’s a small job left to do.

Do it right. Do it well.

 

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Looking In

In the wake of an attack, normality can be the strangest thing of all.

When the first reports came out of London, my heart sank. This seemed to have the earmarks of a scene that we’d witnessed many times in different forms – the public spectacle, the first word of fatalities, the wait for information that would link this all to terrorism. The chaos had begun again and I waited to see the next familiar steps of the dance.

And then someone turned down the music.

I don’t mean that the attacks near Parliament completely fell off the radar screen. But for an American, unless you were looking for more accounts, they seemed to get quickly pushed to the background. By Saturday,  if you did a quick drive-by of online news and social media, it’d be easy for someone on this side of the Atlantic to miss that anything had happened at all.

Why?

The distance? France was farther and #prayforparis remained an online trend for days in 2015.

The low number of casualties? It’s true that this produced (thankfully) few deaths – no bombs in the crowd, no mass shootings or falling buildings to endanger more lives.

The most likely explanation, my reporter brain suspects, is that there’s only so much media oxygen to consume and most of America’s was being tied up in the Congressional health-care drama as the Republican proposals came to a screeching halt. What was left seemed to be consumed by the intelligence hearings. That sort of follow-the-leader isn’t uncommon, especially when local stakes are high and newsroom budgets are thin.

But when even the social media ripples are few (outside of English friends and sources, of course),  that suggests that much of the audience has moved on, too.

This either suggests something very good or very bad.

On the one hand it could mean that, like the English during the Blitz of World War II, we’ve finally become good at carrying on normal life in the face of those trying to disrupt it, that we’ve gained some perspective about how to sort out the severe from the sad. I’d like to think that, I really would.

But it’s also possible that there are just too many alarms on the bridge. When crises seem to fill the headlines, when every story demands your attention (with or without justification), how easy is it to become numb to one more alert? At what point are there too many things to invest your heart in any given one?

At what point do people, do countries, say “Forget the rest of the world, I’ve got my own problems?”

It’s easy to do. Problems need to be attended to, whether it’s a fight to make sure your family is cared for, or a struggle to address or prevent national calamities. Attention can’t be everywhere and priorities have to be made.

But when eyes turn too far inward, when our neighbor’s problems become invisible in the face of our own, we become less of an “us” and more of a crowd of scattered “me’s.” Worse, we miss the chances for shared strength that can come as we reach for each other and face down our mutual problems as one.

We don’t need to be traumatized by every new peal of the bell. That way lies fatigue and madness. But we can’t close the door and pull the shades either. Care for self and care for others need not be exclusive from one another. Should not be. Cannot be.

Be someone’s helping hand. Be someone’s neighbor. Even if all you can offer is attention and sympathy, pay it. It spends well.

Together, we can build a “normal” worth having.

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Love in a Cold Time

The first serious snowfall of winter always energizes me.

Maybe part of me never stopped being nine years old. That’s how old I was when the Christmas Blizzard of 1982 hit, transforming the world around me with sudden rapidity. A six-block drive to pick up Grandma became an epic journey in my Dad’s crawling Subaru. A bicycle left on the back porch disappeared beneath a carpet of white, except for one tip of one handle. The entire back yard became a frozen world to explore, one that my sisters and I – proper “Star Wars” fans, all – immediately declared to be Hoth from “The Empire Strikes Back.”

In the years since then, I’ve learned about the joys of freeing high-centered cars, salting frozen sidewalks at 6 a.m., and wrenching your spine while shoveling snow. (Snow shovels make a very inadequate cane, by the way.) None of it has deterred me very long from my basic thesis. If anything, it’s deepened the complexity, setting off two overlapping voices in my head:

“It’s wintertime. What a white, beautiful and lovely place the world is.”

“It’s wintertime. What a cold, chill and deadly place the world is.”

The latter cannot be denied. This is a time of year that can freeze people outside or drain them inside, as the dark nights lengthen. It’s a time when we become all too aware of the people who should still be here celebrating with us, when the empty chair takes on a presence of its own and summons more ghosts than a dozen “Christmas Carols.”

Which is why I maintain that this is still the perfect time for a celebration of universal love.

I admit, this may take some explaining.

Almost every belief and tradition turns on the lights this time of year to hold back the cold and the darkness. Whether it’s Christmas, Hanukkah, Diwali, Yule, or something else, there’s this deep-set need to push back against the encroaching night and create beauty. The light kindled stands all the more bright and lovely by contrast, even without five marching Snoopys, four Santa Nativities, three melting lights, two inflatable turtledoves, and a partridge in a floodlit pear tree – all of them on the same yard.

But anyone can plug lights in a socket and “ooh” at the result. It doesn’t necessarily follow that we also turn our thoughts to tidings of comfort and joy, especially in times when the thermometer would have to be heated to reach two digits.

But it’s all the more fitting that we do. Because this is the time of year when love takes guts.

Love comes easy when the sun is shining and the world is green. The barriers are down. It’s when we relax, when we court, when we find it easiest to visit on the spur of the moment. Why not?

But when it takes an act of will and a thick pair of boots just to make it from the front door to the mailbox … that’s when even the smallest gesture takes on new meaning. The natural instinct is to stay huddled inside in the warmth – and we have to ignore that instinct if we want to be able to help a friend, a neighbor, a stranger freezing on the street.

We expose ourselves every time we do that. But we also spread the warmth to places where it otherwise could not go.

Anyone who lives in Colorado, I think, knows that it’s during the times of extremes that you find out what your neighbors are made of. Flood or drought, wildfire or blowing snow, this is when you see the open-armed charity and almost selfless courage begin to emerge. It’s when a community is tested, to see whether you truly have a community at all or just a bunch of people living together.

This particular test is more predictable than a rising river, more enduring than a blaze in the woods. So what better time to celebrate brotherhood and goodwill? Sure, church scholars talk about how Christ was probably born in the spring or the early fall (to draw from my own faith for a moment), but the story of love coming to a hostile world would still belong in the winter, even if no other tradition had demarcated the territory and lit the darkness.

This is where risky, selfless, muscular love belongs.

And if that love comes with strong vertebrae and a snow shovel – so much the better.

See you in Hoth, everyone. May the season be with you.

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Lifestyles of the Miss and Famous

As we made our way through the crowded downtown, Missy’s face lit up. She quickly waved, calling to a stranger in the crowd.

“Hi!”

Did I say stranger? In moments, the excited woman had seen us, returned the wave, and come over to give an ecstatic Missy her hug.

“I used to work with her in school,” the woman said, looking down at the small figure in the wheelchair (our choice for long-distance travel). “But that was .. how old is she? … at least 27 years ago.”

Twenty-seven years ago. And Missy remembered her like yesterday.

I shouldn’t be surprised anymore.

Traveling with my disabled friend and ward gives me a taste of what true celebrity is like. I mean, I’m reasonably well known through this column. But everybody knows Missy. And she always knows them. Always.

“Hi, Missy!”

A trip downtown can quickly become a chorus of that, especially at big events like Festival on Main. We’ll turn around and meet her old softball coach. Or a woman she met at the therapy pool. Or her long-standing “boyfriend,” a guy she’s known since they were in Tiny Tim together.

Mind you, she’ll approach and charm total strangers, too. But once she’s met them, she doesn’t forget them. There’s that look of mutual recognition, the surprise on the other person’s face, the beaming glee on hers.

“Well, hey, Miss! How are you?”

It’s a gift I kind of envy, along with her bump of direction. Travel through Longmont and she’ll quickly point the way to the spots important to her – her day program, her chiropractor’ office, the bowling alley, her favorite restaurant. Her speech may be infrequent and her steps slow, but the pointing finger is absolutely certain.

“Look over the’e!”

As I write it out, I realize how much sense that makes. It’s the same gift. Every face she knows, every place she indicates, is something or someone she cares about. And what she cares about, she doesn’t forget.

In nearly 41 years, that adds up to an awful lot of caring.

Powerful.

I wonder how many don’t see that power? How many just see the small, slight figure with the 100-watt smile and walk past, figuring they’ve summed her up in a glance? A lot of us do that as we go through our day, seeing glimpses and shorthands rather than people.

It’s understandable; the day is long and life is busy. But it becomes inexcusable when that shorthand becomes our sole perception of the world, an over-simplified shadow play of “theys” and “thems” and “those peoples.”

Watch any kind of social media after a major event – the Ferguson conflict, say, or a major immigration incident – and you’ll see it happen. At least half the commenters will have read no more than the headline. Many of the rest will have gone just far enough to fit things into the Procrustean bed of their expectations, whether the usual labels make sense or not.

That’s no way to learn. Or to live.

Truth is complicated. And messy. There are lives and struggles and facets and contexts we know nothing about, that lie hidden to the first glance or even sometimes the seventh. To ignore that is to take the easy way out, to live among stereotypes instead of people.

To avoid having to care.

I don’t mean to suggest that we’re all monsters. This often isn’t a reflex born of cruelty, but of haste and indifference. But reflexes can be retrained. In fact, that’s often a requirement to do anything useful with them.

Thanks to Missy, I’ve got my training regimen. Never forget those you care about. Always be quick to expand that category. And never assume that the first impression is the only one.

Meanwhile, I’d better go find my sunglasses.

After all, I’m traveling with a celebrity these days.