Nudges

On Sunday morning I woke up dreaming about a neighbor who lives across the street. I had only met her once. My dream was “call Pat.”

So… I did.

She lives alone. I told her I was thinking about her and wanted to know how she was doing during this pandemic. It turns out she’s a teacher and last week a little girl she knew had died. She was feeling very sad and said her emotions must have radiated all the way to my house. We arranged to meet safe-distance, outdoors later with another neighbor. Late afternoon we all drank hot cocoa and chatted on lawn chairs in the ’30 degree weather. In Chicago during November, the sun goes down early so it was dark as well as cold. Still, it was nice. We filled each other in on our lives in “stay at home” and found some other things we could laugh about, too.

It felt good to reach out and provide kinship to someone. I need to do more of that — for others as well as myself. I worry about people who live alone during this pandemic, especially when experiencing losses. I also worry about people who are stuck living with someone who is abusive or just annoying. As I write this, I realize if you’ve been in “stay at home” mode with the same person now for eight months, even that could merit an outreach.