Personal essays
Kindness in the face of futility
A Tradition
A few days before Valentine’s Day I noticed that Susan had hung hearts on the trees in the garden at the end of our street.
She and her son have done it every year for seventeen years.
For the first ten years some of the hearts had Elena’s name on them.
For the past seven, others have had Kim’s name on them.
I wrote an email to my neighbors about these hearts and this on going act of kindness just to make sure they’d noticed.
They had.
The Garden
Jan used to live across the street from the garden.
Our street and the one behind my house come together in sort of a tilted U where Coventry comes to a dead end.
Jan lived on one side of the U and we’d see her each day when I walked my kids home from elementary school.
As her cancer got worse and her chemo caused her to lose her hair, she still came outside and gardened. It was good for her and it was good for us to see her outside in her baseball cap doing what she loved.
Elena always stopped to chat. And when Jan died, a little more than eighteen years ago, Elena insisted on going to sit shiva and pay her respects. Elena was six.
Eighteen years ago this Thursday, Elena died suddenly.
The next summer our neighbors gathered to plant a garden for the two of them.
There’s a bench that has the names Jan and Elena engraved. There are trees that were planted along with flowers.
I have so many great memories of that day. My wonderful neighbors coming together to remember and memorialize two people who lived on their street. So many of them put in a lot of work.
But I also remember the person driving by who stopped, backed up, lowered their window, and told us that the garden would never last. It would be overgrown and forgotten in a year. He asked why we even bothered.
Sophie
I try to get out of the house at least once each day and do some work at a cafe.
Last summer I was at one of my regular places, lost in my work with my headphones playing music when I noticed a young woman standing next to my table looking at me.
I took my headphones out and looked back at her.
“Are you Daniel Steinberg?” she asked.
I told her I was.
“I’m Sophie,” she said.
Sophie had been Elena’s best friend. Their birthdays were two days apart. They had been planning for a joint celebration when, a little over a week before their seventh birthdays, Elena suddenly died.
I can’t imagine being twenty-four and having the self confidence to approach a stranger and introduce myself. I’m so glad she did.
We chatted a bit and I could see the six year old inside of this twenty-four year old. She provided a glimpse at what my six year old might have become.
I asked about her parents and her brothers and she brought me up to date.
I told her I’d tell Maggie I’d seen her and maybe they could get together the next time Maggie was in town - and they did.
She went back to her table. Back to studying for her med school classes.
I put my headphones back in - but couldn’t focus.
The harvest
Some of the hearts have Elena’s name on them and some of the hearts have Kim’s name on them.
Each year I walk down to the garden and take pictures. Often I try to find a shot that has hearts with both of their names visible.
But there are hearts that have no name on them.
These are hearts that anyone can see as hanging for someone they love or care about, living or dead.
I always remember that man who stopped to yell at us.
I don’t know why he thought the things he thought.
I don’t know why he felt compelled to share these thoughts with a group of neighbors working together to do something nice.
In the eighteen years since Jan and Elena died, in the seventeen years since the garden was created, the world around me has changed where it feels like there are more people like him who have these thoughts and feel entitled and encouraged to share them with the people struggling to just plant a damn garden.
And yet the garden stands.
Those trees have grown so much in seventeen years. I look at them and see the saplings my neighbors planted.
The city saw the work my neighbors had done and added trees of their own.
It reminds me that sometimes the kind things you do in passing last for years and years.
Sometimes people build on these little things.
We keep planting trees no matter how futile it seems these days.
Essay from Dim Sum Thinking Newsletter 204. Read the rest of the Newsletter or subscribe