“It’s March of my Freshman year, and I don’t have any friends.”

Happy Friday, March 19, 2021. I hope you have had a good week thus far.

Yesterday afternoon in a session with a client he remarked, “It’s March of my freshmen year and I don’t have any friends.”

 We started reflecting on how hard it is to connect with other students even in groups intended to do just that. The everyday moments, the moments of asking to borrow a pen, or passing a paper to a classmate, or even seeing a peer in the hall, all were gone this year. The small moments of students connecting without a teacher or a counselor but merely through the everyday encounter, all those moments didn’t exist.

 As some of us make our way back to school next week, I’ve been thinking a lot about the fall and the little moments that meant so much to me. Walking in every morning, adjusting to the new morning ritual (health screening, temperature check, ID scan), and having Connie from the clinic and the school safety office-whose-name-I-do-not-know-but-must-find-out, greet me with a warm welcome and a smile. My fluster briefly melted away, and brought me into my day feeling linked to something bigger than myself.

 Or the moment a colleague brought me to Socrates Sculpture Garden for the first time in October. Why did I never take the time to leave school and get coffee during the day last year? How did I miss this beautiful park for over three years?

 I came across this poem the other day and immediately thought of all the moments of connection, of communal care I miss and never thought twice about before the pandemic. 

Small Kindnesses

By Danusha Laméris

I’ve been thinking about the way, when you walk

down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs

to let you by. Or how strangers still say “bless you”

when someone sneezes, a leftover

from the Bubonic plague. “Don’t die,” we are saying.

And sometimes, when you spill lemons

from your grocery bag, someone else will help you

pick them up. Mostly, we don’t want to harm each other.

We want to be handed our cup of coffee hot,

and to say thank you to the person handing it. To smile

at them and for them to smile back. For the waitress

to call us honey when she sets down the bowl of clam chowder,

and for the driver in the red pick-up truck to let us pass.

We have so little of each other, now. So far

from tribe and fire. Only these brief moments of exchange.

What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these

fleeting temples we make together when we say, “Here,

have my seat,” “Go ahead — you first,” “I like your hat.”

If it feels right, I encourage you to celebrate the small kindnesses in your life. 

Have a wonderful weekend.

Warmly,

Carrie