EDITOR'S ANGLE | WINTER 2011/2012Connections
by Paul D. PfeifferAt the end of a long day, I sometimes find myself staring up at the ceiling, churning through the mundane complications of everyday life: teacher conferences, soccer practice, health care bills I thought we’d paid already, a chimney that doesn’t draw, and a garage door that still needs to be fixed. At times like this, I count 10 things I am grateful for and, besides being an exercise in humility, it helps me sleep.
Recently, I lay in bed, tired but appreciative. Earlier in the day, my daughter called me in a state of agitation, telling me the car wouldn’t start, she was late for her class off-site, and she was leaving the car at school. It was Friday, my wife was out of town for the weekend, and my three children would be scattered all over St. Paul, Minnesota by 4 p.m. This left a significant hole in our delicate transportation web. I looked outside at the cloudy skies and saw I would be working on the car in the dark and cold. And to be honest, I’m as mechanically inclined as a block of wood.
As I started down the back stairs of the office, I appreciated that I had the flexibility at work to run out and collect my kids. And as I jogged out the service door of our building, I appreciated the train that shows up at regular eight-minute intervals. And as I turned the corner and saw the train just pulling away from the station, I was grateful that at a brisk jog, I could run the four blocks to the next station and catch it there, because the train would hit two stoplights.
As my chest heaved, and with the slight taste of blood in the back of my throat, I stepped into the train, glad that my wife had encouraged me to start doing triathlons six years ago. I felt like a superhero, because I could race a train and win. And I was thankful that I married an insightful woman, who had the vision to see how useful this might be to me when she was off drinking wine with her friends at a cozy cabin in Wisconsin.
On the train, I looked around and was happy to be among riders of all shapes, sizes, and colors. A college woman with a full backpack had a thick scar running down her neck and chest, and I guessed it was from open-heart surgery. I marveled that she was still with us—that she was pursuing an education and maybe doing an internship downtown. Her chest was probably wrenched open when she was just a kid, and her parents must have stood terrified, as the masked doctors wheeled their little girl into the operating room, uncertain they would ever see their daughter alive again.
I was suddenly grateful for my friends who labored through years of training to become doctors—one of them may have been the one who cut open that young woman’s chest. And I appreciated my two friends who were ER doctors—who routinely spend their nights suturing gaping head wounds or stabilizing trauma patients, with flakes of windshield glass still clinging to skin and the smell of alcohol lingering in the mix of antiseptic and blood. And I appreciate my small town pathologist friend whose duties include determining the cause of death for the crazy casualties of life in southern Indiana.
The rails rise over the newly paved bike path, and I’m happy for the advocates who fought for the bike trails I frequently use. Across the road, the harvest is coming in by truck and train and is loaded into towering silos. Agriculture provided the roots out of which this particular twist in the Mississippi River grew into a metropolis, and I appreciate the labor of the generations of families who built these cities.
In the right state of mind, the connections come quickly. There are so many things to be thankful for. They are intertwined, and that interdependence feels healthy. No one raises children in isolation. No one repairs a heart by himself. No one harvests a field alone, and no one builds a city without collaboration. The commerce of our everyday lives depends less on exact economic transactions than the give and take of human relations.
My hands still ached, and I was still solidly chilled, even though I was under the covers. I’d fixed the car by following a hunch. Fortunately, replacing a battery was the only mechanical hunch I could confidently address. It was all accomplished without spending $130 on a tow truck. As I lay in bed, I thought of the helpful man who sold me the new battery and my daughter’s friend who picked up my stray kids and the relief of turning the key and feeling the car come to life … and I fell asleep. And I didn’t need to number all the things I was grateful for.