What we give
And what we get
I go to my Unitarian church for a lot of reasons, not least the opportunity to be among other thinking, feeling human beings who share a lot of my concerns as well as my joys. But my favorite moment in the service is when the little kids are called down to listen, close-up, to a story read by the minister. From the high perch where I sit, I can see them all, sitting on the floor in a ragged semicircle. Some kids are shy and hug their stuffy and stare at the ground, if not lean into a parent who has been persuaded to come down to sit on the floor with them. Some kids feel inclined to speak out loudly whenever the spirit moves them, and sometimes their comments are on point, and sometimes they are wildly off-topic, but whatever they say never fails to charm everyone. Some children become so engrossed in the story they listen with their mouth open, their gaze unwavering, not moving, except perhaps to explore the bottoms of their shoes with moving fingers that look like fleshy spiders. I am never bored when there are children around to watch, whether they are a newborn blinking in the light, or a pack of teenagers, whose loud bursts of laughter make you laugh, too.
I was at a crowded airport the other day and a little girl of around five years old was there with her parents and her maybe seven- or eight-year-old brother. She was in great distress, crying and saying over and over, I wanna go! I wanna go! while her parents ignored her.
I didn’t know who I felt sorrier for, the girl or her parents. Her brother was the picture of cool removal, standing off to the side and entertaining himself by watching the people watching them. “I wanna GO!” the girl said. Her parents ignored her. The girl wailed even louder, and her parents continued to ignore her. I thought, well, for Pete sake, couldn’t at least one of her parents try something? Divert her attention? Take her for a tiny walk? Move over to the window where she could see the airplanes? Pretend to be a cat? I was feeling judginess move up my back like a shiver. I was just about to go over and try talking to the girl when another woman, probably in her 70s and with a grandmother’s glint in her eye, marched up to the little family. She looked at the sobbing little girl and told her that her flight had been delayed, too, and she was kind of worried because her dog was waiting for her, would the little girl like to see a picture of her dog? Still crying, but not as loudly, the girl nodded yes, so the woman showed her the photo and then engaged the little girl in conversation and soon the girl was smiling. Not sobbing. Not yelling. I was thinking to myself that what I had witnessed was a reminder that it always pays off to try to help someone. It can take only a little thing to make a big change. Just as I was completing that thought, though, something happened.
