Community is Where We Build It
It was a usual day of errands in the city with one eye on my list and the other eye on the BC Ferry app gauging how much I could possibly squeeze in before I turned into a miss-the-ferry-pumpkin. I think this is an islander phenomenon, where it feels like a bit of a race course getting through what needs to be done in the city so one can at last be on the ferry home to solitude.
I hurry up so I can slow down.
Striding into a shop in Park Royal I was slowed to a standstill as an elderly gentleman shuffled to the counter ahead of me. There was an exchange between him and the clerk and an issue as he wanted to purchase coffee beans but he didn’t know what kind. He had always come in with his wife. She had always ordered the beans. There was a pause in the conversation and a look of great concern flooded the clerk’s face as it became clear that his wife had since passed away.
Over the next few moments the tenderness of the exchange was like a drop of soap in greasy water – peeling back the surface of everything else that simply doesn’t matter. And in a matter of seconds the transactional exchange that is the heart of a city mall dissolved. What remained was a young woman expressing sincere condolences to an elderly man who felt a little untethered. It was a caring, in person relationship that can be rare to see in a city, in our gig economy and in our busy, high employee turn-over businesses.
By comparison, small towns serve up that intimacy by nature of our close-knit living. When something happens to one of us, it in turn happens to all of us to some degree. To hear the sirens in the city is something happening to someone else. To hear the sirens on Bowen has us tuned in with concern for our neighbours and friends. We show up for each other, lend an ear, make a meal, share a laugh and a kind word.
The coffee was eventually purchased, more kind words were relayed and the man shuffled out of the store, glancing up at me briefly. My tea purchase seemed so wholly unimportant. I told the clerk how very kind she was. She looked across the counter at me struggling a bit to compose herself. The couple had been regulars, she said. His wife was so very kind, she said.
For the rest of my afternoon it was like someone had opened the window in a stuffy room. I was more awake, more apt to look up and get eye contact and make a joke and crack a smile with the grocery store clerk, maybe a bigger smile and a more sincere thank you to the BC ferry attendant in the toll booth with the thankless job. Because I could. Because it’s these little exchanges that together can perhaps make a sea change. It is the possibility of building a bit of community wherever we are. And the potential for an exponential difference to be made by those of us who are able to deliver on any particular day, and for those of us like the elderly gentleman who are on the receiving end.
