MountainMornings

When my Son-in-Law came down with Covid this summer, a friend sent him a tee shirt. I could read the date 2020 on the front, but had to get a little too close to understand the imagery. He happily told me, “It’s a picture of a dumpster fire!”

He is a Critical Care doctor, and his friend is an ER doctor.

No one was prepared for a worldwide pandemic; I thought we should stock up on a two week supply of canned goods. Then the weeks just rolled on, like a snowball becoming an avalanche with millions infected. And in order to care for one another, we were told to wear a mask and stay home.

My husband Bob, the grandson of a tailor, converted a corner of our living room into a mask making operation. My kitchen island became a cutting station. We tore up tee shirts and ordered fun fabrics online – a Star Wars mask for our grandson, and a Scrabble mask for his sister.

Then he offered free masks to all our neighbors on Next Door. Kind friends donated fabric to the cause and we met new neighbors. He made special masks for children and masks to cover special hospital masks. Then a funny thing started happening.

Chris dropped off two ingenious mask holders to keep around our necks that her sister had made.

MaryAnn started a rotating book club, and later a traveling cocktail hour – in gardens, all socially distanced.

Ellen brought us peaches.

Linda hosted an Oktoberfest under her carport.

Sheila gave me a beautiful floral mask, Skip brought us cake, and Yoko baked us bread.

Berdelle hand delivered the most beautiful white iris when we lost Ada. It had  bloomed for a second time in her winter garden.

In the midst of a seemingly endless semi-quarantine, the words of my Nana came back to me: “Throw your bread out on the water and it will come back with jelly on it.” I didn’t know that one small act of kindness would come back with honey and maple cream too.

And because Time, this year, has had a way of meandering, slowing us down, chiseling away at our essence, I’ve come to believe that there is no such thing as a small act of kindness. Every single deliberate act – every loaf of sourdough bread, every delivery of a meal to an overwhelmed Covid ICU, or pizzas to the Bride’s ER, anytime we stop to talk to a neighbor walking her dog – becomes multiplied exponentially.