Tag: cooperation

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Binding Chords

When it came time for the nation’s obituaries and tributes to sing out with David Crosby’s story, one note kept getting played again and again.

I don’t mean his role in co-founding two legendary bands. I’m not referring to his often stormy personal life and recovery, his engaging presence on social media, or even his Yosemite Sam mustache. All those got talked about, to be sure, and more besides … but one element kept rising to the top in story after story and quote after quote.  

 “Master of Harmony.”   

“… a harmony singer virtually without equal …”

“… his harmonic sensibilities were nothing short of genius.”

That’s a legacy I can appreciate.

If you’ve checked into this column before, you may have noticed that I tend to carry a torch for life’s supporting players. Like the stage manager who keeps a play moving behind the scenes. Or movie characters like Chewbacca who have to play their intentions with zero dialogue. Or the helpful neighbors who quietly make an entire community work without fanfare.

In each case, they’ve mastered the art of harmony. And these days, it can be a rare gift indeed.

In music, harmony’s a balancing act. You need to support the melody without overwhelming it, to hear and provide the notes that will lift someone else up … or, in some groups, that will lift everyone up together. That’s an art.

Now I don’t want to portray Crosby as some sort of selfless monk. That he decidedly was not. But he had the ability to hear how one plus one could equal so much more than two. And coming from his often chaotic life, that harmony may have been all the more remarkable.

But as I hinted above, the art of harmony doesn’t have to stop with music. You don’t need to be a rock star – or even a folk rock star – to make it work. Just someone who can listen for a need and fill it, without needing to seize the spotlight.

Yeah, “just” that.

The challenge is that we live in a world where everyone’s a lead, or wants to be. Step online and every breath of social media is about promoting your own wants and beliefs. Hit the highway, and you’ll find a dozen cars who need your piece of the lane right NOW. And while it’s certainly important to take care of yourself, it’s easy to get sucked into looking no farther than your own skin. If my life is OK and normal, then that’s what matters, right?

But taking that step back can make all the difference.  Three melodies all going their own way without heed for anyone else is a recipe for discord. But when the same three musicians tune to each other and listen, the results can be more powerful than any one of them could have been alone.

In life or music, harmony doesn’t just help the lead. It helps the entire group.

I hope we all get the opportunity to learn that. After all, if rock-star egos can manage it for however brief a period, surely the rest of us have got a chance at getting it right.

It’s worth trying.

I just hope the mustache is optional.

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What a Racket

Ugo Humbert, I feel your pain.

If you’re not an avid follower of tennis news … well, neither am I, to be honest. But the news out of Wimbledon a couple of weeks ago is the sort of thing that any of us could sympathize with.

You see, Ugo’s match got delayed 90 minutes by rain. And when everyone got the word to start up again, he got excited to get back on the court. Maybe just a little too excited.

“Despite coming on court carrying a massive red bag,” Reuters reported, “the 24-year-old sheepishly admitted: ‘I don’t have any rackets – sorry for that.’”

That’s right. A professional tennis player showed up without his racket.

Really, who hasn’t been there? I mean, I we’ve all walked out of the house without something, haven’t we? Car keys, wallet, glasses, phone, the major implement of our profession … it’s all good, right?

OK, it’s easy to tease. But we have all had the nightmare, haven’t we? It’s the athletic version of the “came to school undressed” dream, complete with the inevitable crowd of people laughing nearby. And it’s almost always born of anxiety: the fear of being off guard, unprepared, out of control.

Of course, there’s an irony. What’s most likely to make us unprepared? Anxiety – or rather, the sense of hurry that anxiety can bring.

Don’t get me wrong. There certainly are situations that call for urgency, excitement, even haste. When something’s on fire – metaphorically or literally – it’s a time for action rather than dithering. But it’s easy to get caught up in what needs to be done without spending any thought on how to do it. And that’s how rackets get left behind.

In the ocean, it’s the difference between flailing and swimming.

On the battlefield, it’s the difference between a panicked mob and an army.

In any situation, it’s the difference between impulse and direction. Or the recognition that “Do something!” isn’t the same as “Do anything!”

That’s hard to remember in a crisis. But essential. It requires awareness, thought and preparation. You have to know your goals and what it will take to get there. Sure, you’ll always have to adapt and change for circumstances … but it’s a lot easier to adapt if you have some idea what you’re doing. “Plans are worthless,” Dwight Eisenhower famously said, “but planning is everything.”

We’re having to plan for a lot these days. Alarms scream on the deck from every direction: about the environment, about politics, about viruses, and about 137 other crises besides. (But hey, it’s early yet.) None of these are back-burner questions. All of them are going to require all the ingenuity and energy we can bring.

But energy without focus doesn’t accomplish much.

That’s where we need each other. Not just to support our goals, but to give the “hey, wait a minute” that keeps things on task. It’s the sort of grounding that stage managers give actors, that editors give writers and that friends give friends.

Ugo got that kind of help – belatedly, but it came. Within two minutes, someone arrived with a fresh set of rackets. He was rattled at first, naturally, but went on to win.

It’s a simple lesson: Together, we can keep each other in the game.

Or at least make sure that we’re ready to raise a racket.

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Unexpected Lives

When I found out that my immunization period would end on May 4, I joked that it was perfect for a geek like me.  International Star Wars Day – “May the Fourth Be With You” – what better time to wrap things up?

But lately, it’s not a John Williams theme I’ve been hearing. And that’s appropriate, too.

You see, while the mainstream world knows this time as the day before Cinco de Mayo and the would-be Jedi flood the internet with Star Wars memes, musicians know that there’s another meaning to 5/4. It’s a rhythm, and  a tricky one for many people to feel. Compared to the steady walk of a 4/4 or the lilting waltz of a 3/4, it sounds offbeat, like there’s a slight hitch in it, even though it’s completely regular.

Only a few 5/4 pieces are well known to the general public. But one of them is very well known indeed.

You know it as the “Mission: Impossible” theme.

“Bum, bum, BUM-BUM; bum, bum, BUM-BUM …”

Heather and I have had a lot of Mission: Impossible on lately – not the Tom Cruise movies, but the old 1960s and ‘70s TV show where a team of sharp-witted agents had to think their way through a sensitive assignment. Instead of the abilities of James Bond, an Impossible Missions Team relied on the skills of the con man: planning, misdirection and an ability to steer an over-eager mark into engineering their own doom.

The structure was completely predictable and easy to parody. The team leader would get the latest assignment, “should you choose to accept it,” on a self-destructing recording. He’d assemble his team of experts – usually the same ones every time, unless a guest star was in store – and then put together an elaborate plot of fake identities, careful timing and a little technological magic.

And every single time – EVERY single time – that careful plot would go off the rails halfway through, if not earlier, requiring the team to improvise.

Does that last part sound familiar?

For more than a year, we’ve been living unexpected lives. OK, it’s fair to say that life is never utterly predictable (John Lennon did say “life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans”), but most of us aren’t used to the disruptions being quite this relentless. We’ve had to rewrite how we work, how we learn, how we live … not just once, but over and over.

It’s dizzying. Even infuriating to some. Certainly tiring. Constant alertness, constant adaptation can exhaust anyone.

But two realities from the old show are also in play for us.

The first is that survival and success require a team. We’re not in a Hollywood world where one superstar can save the day, no matter how powerful or famous that person might be. It needs all of us, looking out for all of us, doing what we need to do together.

The second? Simple. The team’s success was never based on “Did the plan anticipate everything?” It was “Did we accomplish the mission?”

We’ve learned. We’ve adjusted. Sometimes we’ve failed. And we certainly won’t see quite the same “normal” at the other end of the pandemic as we did at the start. But as long as we reach that other end, still together, still finding a way to do what we must … then we’ve succeeded.

It hasn’t been easy. But it can be done. Like a certain theme, we all feel a little offbeat, but we are moving forward.

You might even say we’re heading Fourth.

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Digging In

Everyone has their own way of pushing their limits. Some run marathons. Some climb mountains. Some adopt intense exercise routines that would make Captain America gasp for breath.  

Me? Shoveling out a Colorado spring will do just fine, thank you.

I know I’ve got a lot of company here. If you didn’t have a blower, a service or an ally last week, you got to have your own personal encounter with Nature’s own concrete. The sort of wet, dense, heavy stuff that has to be cleared out in layers, testing your spinal column with every scoop.

“GrrrrAAAAA!”

And of course, Colorado’s snow fights back. If you tried to get a jump on the situation last Sunday, you may have had the joy of turning around at the end of a fervent shoveling session to discover your path had been covered over again. Multiple times.

In my case, my brain and heart love snow but my back and knees beg to differ. So with a big storm, I shovel the way some people read “War and Peace” – many short quick bursts rather than one long stretch. (I also have the blessings of helpful neighbors doing their own part and then some, which I’m pretty sure you don’t get with Russian novels.)

It’s tedious. It’s exhausting. More often than not, you feel like you’re making no progress at all. But you keep going because you have to.

That seems to apply to a lot of life, lately.

For some, it’s a year of pandemic existence hitting the mind all at once as a vaccine starts to come into view. So much has been endured, and with a light in the distance the last laps suddenly feel so agonizingly slow.

For some, it’s yet one more shooting in one more city with one more burst of racial hate that shakes the soul with its vehemence. A cycle we seem to keep running like a murderous version of Groundhog Day, a little more fatigued and desperate for each repetition.

For some, it’s not the global but the personal. A stubborn health situation. A broken family relationship. A life that seems to keep pounding the same streets and hitting the same blocked alleys.

Maybe there’s progress, somewhere. Maybe you can even see it, if barely. But it just … seems … oh … so … slow.

You’re not wrong. You’re not crazy.

But you’re not hopeless either.

You’re still in the fight.

And even if it feels like carving Mount Rushmore with a toothpick, every scratch is something. Simply not falling off the mountain is something.

A 10-minute burst against the snow never looks like much. Especially when it keeps coming down. But if we keep finding another 10 minutes … however far apart … things can start to change.

 And when a friend or a neighbor starts to lend their own shovel (or even their blower), that next 10 minutes starts to look more possible.

Sooner or later, snow melts on its own. Most other problems aren’t quite as obliging. But if we persist – if we lend each other the strength to persist – we can make a difference. To ourselves. To our neighbors. Maybe even to the world.

It won’t be easy. It often hurts. But if we pick up the shovel at all, we’re saying it can be done. That even if we can’t do all of it, we can do our piece.

That’s hope.

And that’s an exercise that will make all of us stronger.

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Small Wonders

As our family watched “The Fellowship of the Ring” together, Boromir lifted up the small golden chain that held the Ring and marveled at it.

“It is a strange fate,” he mused, “that we should suffer so much fear and doubt over so small a thing. Such a little thing.”

In the film, of course, those words are an early hint that Boromir is beginning to become entranced by the Ring’s cursed power and that yet again, a character played by Sean Bean is not going to come to a good end. But this time around, the words hit me a little harder.

Maybe because this time around, we’ve seen the danger and life-altering transformation that small things can bring.

A reminder came just a few days ago from Kit Yates, a mathematics expert at Baths University in the United Kingdom. According to Reuters, Yates calculated that all the COVID-19 virus that currently exists in the world could fit inside a can of cola.

No joke – it’s the real thing.

“It’s astonishing to think that all the trouble, the disruption, the hardship and the loss of life that has resulted over the last year could constitute just a few mouthfuls,” Yates said in a statement.

Think about it. Nearly 2.4 million deaths worldwide (as of Saturday). Populations wearing masks, quarantining, keeping their distance. The very way we live, learn and do business utterly transformed. All of it packed into a space that would make the world’s worst Coke.

It sounds impossible. But most of us know the reality. As the great philosopher Yoda once put it, size matters not.

A single nail in the wrong place can bring a two-ton automobile to a stop.

A single tweet at the wrong time can set a nation aflame.

A single sentence with the wrong intent can end a relationship that’s lasted years. Decades.

A strange fate indeed. But as the saying goes, it’s the little things that’ll get you.

And lately the consequences seem to come with lightning speed.

That’s not an argument to live lives of timidity, sitting motionless and silent in the living room lest we say or do anything wrong. But it is a useful reminder to be aware that what we say or do has effects beyond ourselves, and that preventing trouble is a lot easier than fixing it.

That’s why we take cars in for maintenance. It’s why we treat other people with courtesy and respect (or should). It’s why we wear masks and wash hands and look out for our neighbors.

Sure, sometimes it’s frustrating. Sometimes we just want to cast it all aside and do whatever comes in our mind. Most of the time we hold it in, because we know we’re not the only ones who could get hurt.

But there’s another side to it that’s worth remembering. It’s not just the bad things that echo.

Good things add up, too.

They don’t get as much play. But I can still remember every unexpected gift from a neighbor. Every helping hand from a relative. Every stranger who stepped off the sidewalk to make room because Missy’s wheelchair couldn’t social distance. And each act living in my memory helps give me more encouragement to do the same.

When we reach out, when we heal, when we defend from the wrongs of others – it makes a difference. To others. To ourselves.

It takes longer to resonate, of course. It always takes more time to build than it does to destroy. But if we look to help where we can, when we can, as we can and keep doing it … that persistence can also change the world.

Avoid harm. Build help. It seems like such a simple thing, doesn’t it? Such a little thing.

But together, we can make it go viral.

And when we do, I’ll bring some Coke to celebrate.

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Fair Friends in Fowl Times

Two years ago on stage, I played Bob Cratchit, that kind-hearted soul who unexpectedly receives a turkey for his family at the end of “A Christmas Carol.”

A few days ago on Christmas Eve, I found myself wondering if I’d revived the role.

“This is from a friend,” the masked man at the doorstep said, passing over a King Soopers bag and a Christmas card. The bag contained a holiday turkey, ready for the fridge that night and the oven tomorrow. The card contained a short message of holiday cheer, and a simple signature: “Santa.”

I called Heather over. We both looked at it, amazed.

The funniest problem of the day had just been solved.

**

We’d been laughing and shaking our heads about it just that morning.  On the Night Before The Night Before Christmas, our ward Missy the Great had decided that yes, she actually did want a “fancy” Christmas dinner even though we weren’t going anywhere or seeing anyone – or maybe even because of it.  So Heather put together a grocery list of stuff to be delivered on the morning of the 24th, including a ham for the main dish.

The groceries arrived and the ham with it – sort of.

What arrived was sliced ham. The sort that you use for lunch meat.

“Well,” Heather said after we’d spent enough time being flabbergasted, “I suppose we can always do sandwiches.”

It was one more verse in the Coronavirus Anthem, a glitch in the universe that you had to either laugh at or go crazy. (Well, crazier.) And so we settled into our day, telling the story in amused disbelief to a few friends and relatives, and otherwise moving on.

At least, until the knock at the door came.

I still don’t know if one of our listeners decided to quietly lend a hand, or if an already-existing good intention just happened to “click” with the universe. The latter may sound unlikely, but again, this is 2020.

And good neighbors have also been a verse in the Coronavirus Anthem.

**

It’s easy to forget. We hear a lot about conflict and division these days, and not without reason. There are stark challenges ahead for our country and the world, and people have strongly-held views about how to meet them. Even when everyone’s “playing nice,” that’s a recipe for struggle. And when my oft-quoted Paul Simon verse comes into play – “Still a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest” –  it can become downright disastrous.

But there’s more to us than that.

And it’s what will finally carry us through.

There have been jokes online about how this isn’t the apocalypse that “Mad Max” movies told us to expect, where grimy violent heroes with a deep stockpile of ammunition will win the day. If anything, this is the sort of disaster that the Far West has weathered for generations … the sort where you get through by looking out for your neighbor, in big ways and small.

It’s been true in floods. In blizzards. In high wind and deadly drought. You think about what you can do for the people around you, whether it’s wielding a snow shovel, a mask, or a bit of hope.

And together we overcome what we could never survive alone.

**

This turkey isn’t the first bit of hope and love that’s arrived at our doorstep from a thoughtful heart. But it’s the latest confirmation that we’re not alone in this. And as we head into 2021, it’s one more thing that makes me hope a little harder.

No, things won’t magically transform on January 1. But it can be one more step on the road to somewhere better. As long as we walk that road together in heart, even when separated in body.

A new year’s waiting. It’s time to open the door and see what waits.

May it be a real turkey – in the best sense of the word.

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Carry That Wait

In “The Princess Bride,” there’s a moment where the beyond-master fencer Inigo Montoya stands at the top of a cliff, watching his opponent-to-be slowly climb the rock toward him. The cliff is steep. The climb is slow. And Inigo just wants the fight to begin.

“I hate waiting,” he mutters.

Lately, Heather and I have felt a certain kinship with Señor Montoya. Because waiting, it seems, is the most difficult battle of all.

Sometimes it’s the Parent/Guardian Standby, waiting for a Missy tantrum to blow out so that we can get back to what we’re supposed to be doing.

Sometimes it’s the Chronic Illness Blitz, where Heather is trying to outlast the pain of a sudden surge in her chronic conditions (lately the MS) and both of us have nothing to do but wait in anguish.

And of course, sometimes it’s waiting on a larger reality. Like the pandemic. Or the wildfires. Or the other thousand unnatural shocks that 2020 is heir to.

Which means, right now, we’re all Inigo. We want something visible to fight, something to do. But any progress made is almost invisible. And waiting – whether in pain, in endurance, in impatience or desperation – is exhausting business.

Sometimes it’s necessary. Sometimes there’s literally nothing you can do but bide your time and wait for a better change of season. All of us hate acknowledging that – we want to be not just the protagonist of our story, but the author – but it is a lesson that needs to be learned, over and over.

Sometimes … well, sometimes there is something to do. It may not be much. It may be completely ineffective. But if it doesn’t hurt someone else – or better yet HELPS someone else – then it may also be worth trying.

The small bit of comfort offered in a time of pain.

The attempt to redirect a tantrum-generator onto something else.

The basic courtesies and protections that make it possible to live life at all when viruses fly and the skies turn orange.

Here, too, we’ve got a role model. Inigo hates waiting … so he offers to throw his opponent a rope and swears on the soul of his father he will reach the top alive. In the short term, that leads to his defeat. (To be fair, he was the only one not wearing a mask). But in the long run – and after a VERY long period of waiting – he finds a new partnership and a greater goal, one that allows him to rise above being a petty clock-punching henchman and become the hero he was meant to be.

Consideration for others. Keeping commitments. Becoming aware of the bigger picture. No, those aren’t bad lessons to learn at all.

I still hate waiting. I still want something to draw my sword on, even if I know I’ll lose. But with an eye for kindness and a drive for compassion, it doesn’t have to be empty waiting. `We can be there for each other. And in being there, we make ourselves better.

Maybe that’s enough. I suppose it has to be.

If nothing else, it makes the wait of the world a little lighter.

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The Great Escape

It sounded like the checklist for a bank robbery. Masks on. Remember how we practiced this. Get in, get out, go home.

“Are you ready?” I asked Missy.

“Y-yeah!” The cloth hid her grin but her eyes were bright.

And with that, we crossed the street to the comic book store. Our first (extremely brief) foray downtown since the Great Stay-at-Home was underway.

For Missy, it may as well have been a lottery win.

Regular readers may remember that when the world went into lockdown, our developmentally disabled ward went into frustration. Missy doesn’t talk a lot but she loves being around people, the extrovert’s extrovert who’s happiest in the middle of a dance floor, or a crowded restaurant, or a knock-em-down day at the bowling alley. She’s never forgotten a face, so any trip around town tends to produce a “Hey you!” and a wave as she works her way over, while I quickly try to remember if this is an old friend of hers or someone who’s about to become a new one.

So as you can imagine, COVID-19 has been her personal Lex Luthor. Only without the cool gadgets and shiny green rocks.

No restaurants. No crowds. Nothing beyond the walls of home, really, since with her disabilities she’s considered part of the “vulnerable “ population. And with her favorite businesses and weekly activities closed, there wasn’t anywhere to go.

I can hear some of you nodding your heads. Yep, familiar situation. A lot of folks were in the same boat – they just couldn’t share crew space.

That’s not easy. Especially for the most social folks among us who need a visit, a hug, a change of scenery the way that some of us need oxygen or water.

And it’s one reason why we’re finding re-opening the world to be a lot harder than shutting it down.

If you are or have been a parent – Happy Father’s Day, by the way! –  you know what I’m talking it about. Saying “NO” is frustrating, but clear. Saying “Yes, we can, if …” is a lot harder. That usually means conditions and rules and promises. And promises are easy to make but hard to keep in the heat of the moment. Of course I’ll walk the dog if we get one! Sure I’ll clean my room before going out!

We mean well. But we get excited. We want to hurry things along.

And in a situation like this, where careful steps are needed, that over-eagerness can trip things up fast.

The good news is that we’re still in a place where careful steps can work. Where they have been working. Where thinking about what we do before we do it can make a big difference.

With Missy, that meant practicing regularly with her mask, making sure she could keep it on, and using her wheelchair when we finally went out for real to reduce the chance of wandering.

With us as a society, it means continuing to look out for each other. To not just focus on the stuff we want to do, but to learn and practice the things we need to do, in order to make sure that we all get through this.

It’s easy to get impatient. But if we keep it doing right, even the small victories become a big deal. And the big victories come that much closer.

Thank you to everyone who’s been doing it right. Who’s given us this crack in the door. Together, we’re making life just a little more normal.

For Missy, that’s an excitement that nothing can mask.

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In Good Hands

Years ago, my wife Heather referred to an omni-competent physician as a “Swiss Army Doctor” – the sort who seemed to be good at everything, whether they were part of his specialty or not.

She ought to know. Because Heather is one heck of a Swiss Army Person.

She’s a fearless driver who’s undismayed by Denver traffic.

She’s an aunt who speaks fluent Child, winning the immediate trust and understanding of anyone under 10 years old. (Yeah, she was going to be a teacher at one time.)

She’s a patient who’s done everything from diagnosing her own conditions before her doctors did, to fixing her own IV when it threatened to come loose after a home infusion.

Lifehacks? Minor repairs? Odd bits of knowledge? Never bet against the mind of a woman who’s read War and Peace cover-to-cover and is ready to start again.

In short, she’s the kind of person that everyone knows they can rely on. And that’s the trouble.

Because Heather has also been chronically ill most of her life – Crohn’s disease, ankylosing spondylitis, and most recently, multiple sclerosis. And that means two things.

One, it means that life can get very frustrating for her, when something she should be able to do suddenly becomes difficult – say, because of the balance issues that MS can bring, or the “brain fog” that can even make reading a trial at times.

But the second is more subtle. Heather needs to sometimes not be needed. To just be sick, and have everyone else carry the weight for a while.

That’s all too easy to forget. Embarrassingly easy, in fact.

And the truth is, most of us have been in similar situations.

Sometimes it’s on the personal level – the parent, or neighbor, or colleague, who can seemingly do it all, and thus often gets asked to. Whose hands keep getting filled, even when there’s no room left to grip. If none of it gets passed on, something is going to slip. Probably several somethings.

Sometimes, it’s on the institutional level – services and agencies and organizations that you’ve come to rely on, whether local, federal, or in between. You assume things will go on as they always have, and so they do … until the day that there’s a new person in charge, a new policy in place, a new mandate from higher up. Suddenly the secure becomes scary. Suddenly things you never thought could happen are becoming the new normal, while things you could trust are no longer certain.

In both cases, the panic usually comes when a crisis hits – and at that point, a lot of damage has already been done. That’s when you’re scrambling, trying to patch the holes, grab the tasks, juggle the flaming chainsaws that are already in the air. And sometimes that’s unavoidable – but only sometimes.

Most times, the needs and the dangers can be seen far ahead. But seeing them requires attention. Understanding. A willingness to work before there’s a need.

It means anticipating when a loved one might be overwhelmed, and taking the initiative to relieve the pressure.

It means having a plan before the roof leaks or the furnace dies.

It means doing more than vote, but being engaged and involved in the political process before it comes down to casting ballots.

Sure, it’s not always possible. No one can do everything they need to do – and that’s the point. If we all look out for each other, if we all stay alert to jump in where we can, then we can make the ride easier for all of us. We’ve seen this in times as dramatic as the 2013 flood and as quiet as a family’s mourning – when we stand together, we’re stronger. We’re family, neighbors, community.

We all remember that less than we should. Myself included. So here’s the reminder.

Be there. Do what needs doing.

And let the hardest-working hands get some rest at last.

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Rushing to Help

With bowls and ingredients in hand, my wife Heather armed herself to make my birthday cake. Naturally, Missy jumped to help, eyes aglow.

For those of you who remember my previous chronicles of our disabled aunt/ward, who’s 43 in physical age but much younger in heart and soul, you may recall that she lives life with enthusiasm. So when she helps out in the kitchen, Missy throws everything she has into it – in more ways than one. As Heather later related it, the script for the afternoon looked something like this:

HEATHER: “Oooh, hang on.”

MISSY: (Begins plopping spoonfuls of cocoa directly on the cake.)

HEATHER: “Wait, honey, I have a bowl.”

MISSY: (Drops two-thirds of the cocoa and most of a bag of sugar in the bowl.)

HEATHER: (Turns around from softening butter) “Oh, my goodness, hang on, that’s a lot of cocoa!”

The result was perhaps the most well-frosted cake in the sidereal universe, along with a broadly smiling Missy and a thoroughly exhausted Heather. Rarely has a baker been so eager to light the candles.

It’s not the first time Missy has hurried to assist around the house. If we start to hang up clothes, she immediately grabs a hanger and a shirt – though her coordination is such that she often tries to place a sleeve on the hook rather than the base. In dish washing, she’s quick to rinse and eager to help empty the dishwasher – but it sometimes takes a sharp eye to make sure that dirty glasses don’t join the clean ones on the shelf.

So yes, at times, Missy’s help requires an extra dose of attention. It can leave you feeling a bit wrung out by the end of the task. Sometimes it’s even tempting to quote Max Bialystock in “The Producers” and say “Don’t help me.”

But when a willing spirit offers, what can you say but yes?

It’s something that’s familiar to a lot of political movements these days. When groups have a common overall cause but different agendas, a lot of energy can be wasted on internal friction as each decides the other isn’t “doing it right.”

“Don’t you know that …?”

“Where were you when … ?”

“Oh, this is so important, but what about …”

Without careful attention, a movement can end up going sideways rather than forward, unclear where its next step should be and how it should be taken. Again, it’s tempting to say “Go tend your own garden and leave mine alone.”

But that kind of splintering results in a lot of small nudges rather than one big push. And it misses so many opportunities.

As with Missy help, it can be a teaching moment. An awkward alliance can be a chance for everyone to truly learn another’s cause, history, and motivations.

Even more so, it forces you to pay attention to the task at hand. We spend a lot of our life on auto-pilot, doing familiar things in familiar ways. But when you have to keep an eye on how someone else is washing the dishes, you also focus more carefully on your own. If you have to instruct someone else on your goals and tactics, you’re also reminding yourself.

The enthusiasm can make things take longer. But with care, it can also produce a satisfying result – and just maybe, some long-term lessons that stick with everybody for the next time.

As it happens, the cake was beautiful. Sure, the frosting was a bit thick and the sprinkles were all in one small area. But it didn’t matter. The result was something sweet, to the taste buds and the heart.

So thank you, Missy, for helping out Heather.

When it comes to assistance, you really take the cake.