The Kindness of Trees…and People

A few days ago, I was in the community laundry room at my apartment complex when I spotted a bottle of Tide detergent sitting on a table, a handwritten note taped to its front. The message on the bottle read:

Repaying kindnesses

I hope you have a wonderful day!

Please only take what you need. It is important

to help one another. Sometimes all we need is a little kindness. 

Below those words, a red heart had been drawn on bright green paper. And beside the bottle of Tide there was a stack of quarters, with another handwritten note, conveying much the same sentiment. The messages were simple, but powerful, and visually eye-catching – although our lives and maybe our politics may take us in different directions, we are all in this together. We are all connected, even if we sometimes act in ways that undermine our interconnectedness.

In her splendid book, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants, the botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer wrote of how scientists have observed trees interacting with each other:

“The trees act not as individuals, but somehow as a collective. Exactly how they do this, we don’t yet know. But what we see is the power of unity. What happens to one happens to us all. We can starve together or feast together.” 

The power of unity – it seems as if the trees around us are teaching us lessons, if only we were wise enough to notice. And perhaps we are, perhaps there is always hope for “a little kindness” among people, though the world often seems a sad and violent place these days, too often choosing war over peace, embracing power and profit over compassion, technology over humanity and nature.

As I’ve mentioned in the past, I rely on the buses here in Modesto to attend to a variety of errands and needs.  And rare is the day when I’m out walking to a bus stop on McHenry Avenue or Coffee Road when I don’t encounter human privation or suffering in one form or another.  The elderly, the disabled, the unhoused, and families trying desperately just to get from one month to the next are particularly dependent on the “S.”

As the late, highly gifted singer/songwriter Nanci Griffith once lamented, “it’s a hard life wherever you go,” but what continually buoys my spirits is the way this community of bus riders comes together when someone needs help – just yesterday a guy boarded the 22- bus, needing two dollars for the fare. Almost immediately, one of the passengers near the front pitched in with the money, and the fellow was able to get where he needed to go.Things like this happen all the time. People on buses like to commiserate with each other – even if they’re complete strangers – about all manner of topics, and often about very personal struggles such as overcoming problems with drugs or alcohol or getting out of an abusive domestic situation. Lots of information is shared, too – about rents, shelters, the comparative prices of food at various grocery stores.

These conversations bubble up spontaneously, just people helping each other out, sometimes just by listening, other times by saying a word or two of encouragement or advice. It’s probably one of the things we humans do best – we listen to each other, if we give ourselves the time and the space to do so, and we’re mindful of others and like to lend a helping hand if we can – and regret it to the quick when we can’t.

This summer was nothing short of devastating, with its prolonged heat domes and triple digit exhausting days for those of our neighbors riding the buses. But, week after week, I noticed motorists driving by in their vans or SUV’s, asking folks waiting at bus stops if they needed a bottle of water, or maybe a piece of fruit. And just the other day, a fellow passenger was handing out protein bars to passersby at the Regional Transit Center downtown, with several guys appreciatively wolfing down the food before their bus arrived.

A couple of years ago, a generous truck driver actually left a very nice rocking chair at the mini bus shelter near the corner of Oakdale and Sylvan. Unfortunately, within a few days the chair disappeared, but not before a bunch of bus riders had rocked to their heart’s content in it. It was a kind gesture by a stranger who had nothing to gain by leaving the gift there – other than the hope it might bring a moment or two of comfort to people he or she would never lay eyes on.

In late 2021, I wrote a short piece about my good friend Sally who, then eighty-eight and greatly incapacitated by serious health issues, persisted in finding ways to help anyone in need – picking up and delivering mail for a neighbor undergoing chemotherapy, taking folks to the grocery store or pharmacy if they didn’t have a car, driving them to medical appointments.

Sally was selfless to the core of her being, always putting the needs of others ahead of her own, even as old age and illness finally caught up with her.   Sally was still reaching out to friends as her final days approached. When she died two months ago in her apartment by the pond, everyone in our little complex mourned her passing. Her graceful ways and kindnesses had touched many lives.

Of course, I thought of Sally when I read the message on that bottle of Tide. I know she would have been grinning from ear to ear, loving the news that one of her neighbors (identity unknown) was trying to help others. I think Sally would have agreed with Robin Wall Kimmerer’s words that “what happens to one of us, happens to us all.” For Sally, kindness and gratitude mattered – first, last, and always.

As so many of my friends are constantly showing me by their gentle example – we are here to help each other out, to be like a network of trees finding strength in community. In kindness. And, as my neighbor who left the bottle of Tide noted, “Sometimes all we need is a little kindness.”