Kindness Comes First (“Country” 17)

Near zero degrees, every bit of sunlight seems twice as kind.

I wonder what you have discovered during the coronavirus pandemic.

For me, along with writing a couple of novels, this quiet year included much reflection on choices I’ve made and why I made them.

“Courage” and “Adventure” appear over and over in the choices I made from age 16 to 49. That’s how I got the Subaru caught on a tippy ledge on a closed, snowy mountain road at dusk one December, with the kids in the back seat. I don’t regret much, but I do regret the risk of that moment — good thing I learned early in my first Vermont year to always have a shovel in the car, from mid October til mid May, as well as (in those Subaru + kids days) a couple of scraps of carpet to set where the wheels need traction.

My dad’s iron foundry shovel — moves snow and ice, and heavy enough to drive on when needed!

But more than carrying a shovel, I’ve learned to treasure kindness. Especially in the days of courage and adventure.

Somewhere between home-grown-up-in and the tender rooms of La Leche League, where each of us, beyond figuring out how to tend a baby, somehow also committed to tending each other — that is, to tenderness — in my Vermont country life, I learned the practice of kindness. It has very little to do with how often you reach out a…