soft

A gift is something that requires nothing in return. This sentence comes to me like the lights turning on.

I am walking. I am talking into my phone to write this. I am crying, spontaneously.

All morning long listening to On the Media about the perils of social media and surveillance capitalism, but still humanity peeks through the muck. A singular moment crystallizes in my hands as a brown paper bag containing two hand-knitted hats — passed to be at arms-length by a neighbor. These have been gifted to me because I asked, because my Buy Nothing group operates in this very way.

I walk through the slush, the melting snow of this neighborhood, on this land, the landscape of pain. I am overwhelmed. I have nothing to wipe my tears with because my only tissue is holding a handful of seeds harvested by my daughters hands from neighbor’s dead winter vine.

What does it mean?

What does it mean?

What does it mean for the snow to be already melting? How does it feel to be carrying a paper bag full of soft joy?

“I look for them around the neighborhood,” says Christine, smiling.

Please, let my girls love these hats that someone made for me for them because I asked.