The Little Comforts Of Talking To Strangers

Opening Argument: The Little Comforts Of Talking To Strangers

Hundreds and hundreds of responses later, it’s safe to say people were ready to talk. I lifted the half-hour time limit very quickly.

Everybody received it a little differently. For some, it was a chance to talk about the neighbor with the wind chimes or the gassy dog or — these really made me laugh — the partner who refuses to put things back where they belong, keeps eating your snacks, or just has too many musical instruments. (Really. They really made me laugh.) For others, they talked about things that felt huge to me: canceled weddings, losses they couldn’t grieve properly, illnesses that they had to endure without the support they expected. And a lot were in between. People miss sitting in a bar with a friend, or taking a co-worker out for coffee. A lot of parents — a lot — are keenly feeling the loss of how they expected to spend a particular stretch of a kid’s life. Particularly with babies, they’re missing the moment of showing off the gorgeous cheeks and the baby toes, knowing that by the time everybody can ooh and aah, they’ll be doing it in the direction of a somewhat older kid.
 

But it really was a great reminder of how many small, medium-sized, and large disappointments and hurts and frustrations so many of us are weathering. Even if we’re lucky enough to stay at home, the person who delivers groceries, or the co-worker on the Zoom call, or the person who indulges us by saying our dog is definitely the best one at the whole daycare (this could just be applicable to me), those people are all really working to stay afloat, even aside from worries about disease and the stability of democracy and how we’re all going to keep our hands from drying out over the winter. (Also maybe me.) 

I hope you have a place to air that stuff out. I hope you give yourself a place to air it out. Wanting your kids to bring back the tall glasses to the kitchen so you don’t run out doesn’t mean you don’t know it’s hard to work at a hospital right now. We’ve all got some months of this left to go. We’re going to want to open up the steam vents now and then.