Photo: Stuga4.
Suzanne and family are celebrating Christmas in Hamburgön this year with Farmor and Swedish cousins.
I think you may know this poem about the many ways ordinary people show kindness, even to strangers. It’s a good one to reread at Christmas in our beleaguered world.
It’s called “Small Kindnesses” and was written 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.’ “
Photos: John and Suzanne’s Mom.
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