On a winter afternoon as the sun sets, I’m back home, putting more wood on the fire, brewing tea, reflecting on where I’ve been during the day, considering tomorrow. There’s a comfort to closing the door on the world, but also, for me, a vague unease.
Cold air comes in around the window edges. As I sit comfortably looking out at the snow on the pines that ring the garden, I flash back for just a moment to other such hours, long ago in my Iowa childhood.
Then I was a little girl alone with my mother, in the cozy room of our house that we called the den. Nudging her to look up from her book and pay attention, my question was always, “Mommy, what can I doooo?” I was an only child, my dad was at work at the bank downtown, and it wouldn’t be suppertime for several hours. I was at loose ends.
My mother would try to help: Play with your dolls. There are coloring books on the shelf in the closet. We didn’t own a TV, but we had both a fine piano and a Hammond electric organ, reflecting my mother’s musical background and her job as a church organist. For me, though, music lessons came later. My skills, musical or otherwise, were minimal and my resources were limited.
That childish question, asked in a windswept town on the prairie as winter bore down, felt important. Yet all I really needed was a way to keep busy till the evening routines kicked in. Once my dad returned, the meal was underway, and it was time for bed, my balance was restored.
Not so, here in Vermont, as the light fades and cars creep slowly past my house toward home. I do find direction in reading and cooking, and I’ve become musical like my mother was, playing both the piano and the Celtic harp. Still, I am unsettled.
Friends and neighbors would welcome help, and organizations I’m close to request my time and treasure. I’m unnerved by politics and world situations. Daily, our 45th president says or does something that drives me wild; I strive for perspective and send donations to Emily’s List.
Responding to local needs or addressing a political environment filled with confusion and hatred goes beyond merely selecting dolls or a coloring book from a shelf in a closet. There is more I — all of us — must attempt here and now.
“What can I do?” requires that we look at our own resources, however limited or vast, and figure out our own distinct and uniquely personalized answers.
Recently, I was inspired by an email from a friend — I’ll call him George — who lives nearby. His request came as the result of a devastating misfortune, but it has relevance beyond that. George’s nephew in another part of the country had drowned in a canoe accident. George went to the funeral, returned to work, but continued to be concerned, especially for the parents of the young man. What could he do, he wondered.
As time went on, he decided on a project aimed at offering his sister and her family a small measure of solace, if solace could be had. Recognizing how outgoing and kind his nephew had been, George asked a group of friends to take on the challenge of also doing something for someone else that might be helpful, unusual, amusing, or unexpected. And afterward, each of them would write a brief story of their endeavor and put it in an envelope to be addressed to the young man’s family.
George’s small, individual effort reminds me that being deliberately — consciously — involved with others as part of daily living, is essential. Too, we know the local institutions that speak specifically to our experience, interests and expertise. Actions that matter need not be monumental.
In fact, actions that matter are often small or nearly unnoticeable, except in their impact.
During my long career in education, I frequently tried to follow the advice of the early 20th century American Quaker Rufus Jones. A theologian and political activist, Jones spoke at the 1920 Friends first World Conference in London. Offering guidance to ordinary people who would go out to address issues in a war-torn world, he urged focusing less broadly, more locally.
“I pin my hopes,” he said to them, “to quiet processes and small circles, in which vital and transforming events take place.”
Mary K. Otto lives in Norwich.