I’ve been stalling on this one for the whole series. It may be my most dearly held value. It’s not in the cards, but it is in the fruits. It’s kindness. I’m stalling because I don’t know where to start. I have established that I’m not necessarily kind naturally. I am also not always kind today, now, in my life. I want to avoid claiming kindness as a central part of who I am, intrinsically. I’m certainly not kinder than average and maybe less. I am prone to road rage. Nothing too out of hand. No roadside fisticuffs, (except, umm, that one time with my brother…) It’s often, but not always, a sense of justice. How dare you?! Cut me off? Go faster than me? Slower? The gall! There’s a clogged-bowel of a stretch of highway near my home. The road goes from one lane to two, but only for a couple of miles, and then back down to one lane. It’s one of these classic places where wine-tasting tourists do 20 miles per hour lower than the limit and it just makes locals insane. Some local jackass is ALWAYS trying to pass nineteen cars in that passing lane. I am often that jackass. Once, some time back, on that stretch of highway, a man wouldn’t let me merge. We yelled at each other through open windows. Horrifying my wife. Once, several years ago, I had a word-battle with a man in the worst place in modern lawlessness, the Costco parking lot. Again making my wife shrink with embarrassment. These are examples not only of unkindness toward strangers, but inconsideration toward my wife, which is a certain kind of unkind in itself. It’s fairly easy to talk about unkindness. It’s more difficult to talk about the consequences that sometimes present themselves. My wife shrinks. And in that shrinking a little distance is caused between us, a little rift. And the rift requires energy on both our parts to close. And sometimes we don’t have the energy to heal quickly. Sometimes it stays awhile, and festers, it begins to be poison that sinks into our bones and into everyday conversations. Everyday life. Everyday decisions. I’m a lucky one, because every single time this has happened in our lives we’ve chosen to do the hard work of coming back together. But this unkindness is the stuff of divorces. All the damned time. We’ve all seen them unfold. Sometimes it’s some great unkindness like infidelity. But often it’s little things, left unchecked and unmanaged and un-apologized-for. Unrepentant unkindness that spins itself into rancorous hatred that begets even greater unkindnesses. When I think of kindness, I think of my friend who I took $250 off of. But it wasn’t just him, you know. It was his wife, too. She was there, it was her money, too. And the whole reason I knew the pin code for the card was that they lived their lives so very open handedly. I shared in their electricity, and didn’t help with the water bill. I used their internet with abandon. I brought big, dumb, wet fish tanks into their home. I shared their awesome huge apartment watching town go by from an old fire escape. An exciting, city-boy experience for a farmer like me. Eventually I shared in their musicality. I love Jackson Brown and Mike Scott and The Barenaked Ladies to this day because of them. And I shared at their table, they fed me and even clothed me. Our lives had been so differently informed up until that point. I moved in with a cocky, political swagger. A dismissiveness of other people and their ideas. I made dumb jokes and messes I did not clean up. I was a child. But I was old enough to grow the heck up. You may recall the story. I was about eighteen-ish, I was living with a family who had taken me in. I knew of no other place to go. And one day I got wild and I grabbed the debit card from the countertop, and I walked downstairs and across the street to the ATM, and I pulled $250 right the hell out of their account. I do not know what I was thinking. To say I wasn’t thinking is letting me off the hook too easily. I knew what I was doing and I did it. And you know the rest of the story. A little bit of humiliation, and then immediate grace. Mercy. Forgiveness. These things came not only from my friend, to whom I played sidekick for a good part of my late teens and early twenties, but his wife as well. She taught me to move the heck over and make room on the bench. Even when it hurts. She taught me that move. He loved me because he’s got a soft spot for long-shots, embodying some of those traits himself. She had her s**t together and loved me for no really good reason. Her kindness, (and his), has remained, all of these years. And now I have them as a prize. Our love for one another is the prize of their kindness, I get to be a winner, and I’m grateful. Shouting impotently alone in my car notwithstanding, I am pretty kind, most of the time. And that’s because I value it, largely because of them. I value having kindness shown to me, and more and more every day I value being a source of kindness to people in my life. Today I crave it. Now I want to practice it and do it better. Like anything it requires practice to do well. Part of what makes kindness complex to talk about or even think about, is that it gets confused in my head with niceness. And they’re not the same thing. Nice invites for dinner. Kind scrapes food off its own plate and onto yours. Nice was inviting me into a home. Kind was not kicking me out when I stole. Nice makes a gesture. Kind makes a sacrifice. Nice is nice. Kind is deeper. Kind is stronger. They’re similar. Nice, I guess, is like kind junior. They can be confused for one another but they’re not the same. Today the bench belongs to me. It’s my turn to make room on the bench, as often as I can. As much room as I can, for as many people as I can. I have mentioned the small person living in my home who is not my native-born child. This experience is providing me many opportunities to be nice through gritted teeth, and many opportunities to choose kindness. And I can report that broadly and generally speaking, I am choosing that kindness. It’s difficult to write about. Today, as I write this, their future with us is unknown. Perhaps by the time this publishes they will not be with us anymore! It is currently unknowable by me, and unknown by their mother, who is working her way through childhood traumas herself; traumas I can also not really understand or comprehend. This situation is requiring me to make room on my bench. And it’s comparatively easy to make room for a child. A young child, who’s endured tough breaks and hard knocks in their short little life. But I find a need to make room for others. Others who are easier to forget. To take for granted. My bench is getting full! But I can make room. I can make space for my eldest child, who is becoming an adult and who needs me more than ever to take up the slack in our relationship, no matter how tired I am. No matter how much I wish they’d meet me where I think the middle is. I want to remember my own eighteen year old self, and work hard to draw that line in closer, even as they begin to pull slack out. It will require me doing the moving. I will need to follow their dance steps instead of expecting them to follow mine. My bench is getting full! But I can make room. I can observe how confusing this life, and this specific situation with the young child is for my middle child. I can see them where and for who they are, and I can take steps to build up and encourage, even when I’m tired and it might be easier to allow the entropic universe to drag us closer to apathy. My bench is getting full! But I can make room. I can still be soft and tender with my youngest child as they admit quietly that they’re not really okay through this whole thing of life. I can put my elbows out and I can guard our relationship, I can never let go. My bench is getting full! But I can make room. I can show my wife compassion and love, I can do the hard work of seeing things from her perspective. I can sacrifice for her, and give my own so that she has enough. I can pile my plate full in life so that I have plenty to scrape onto others’. My bench is getting full! But I can make room. I can make room for this child, who right now just needs me to be the nuts and bolts of a dad in their life. Not the dad, not your new dad. Just a dad. Here, now, today, I will perform that function. They don’t need to know that ten years from now, by hook or by crook, I will still be there for them. Nice is me making breakfast at 6am every day. Kind is answering my phone in a dozen years and driving to wherever they are to pick them up from an unsafe situation. My job, my kindness now, is simply proving that I’ve got good dad energy. Look, it’s not easy, and I’m no paragon of kindness. I yelled at the Costco guy. I did that and I have other examples. But I do think that the first step is at least wanting it, you know? The first step is cultivating the willingness to do with less, repair what’s broken, make room on the bench. My friend’s wife didn’t have to make room for an 18-year-old thief. My wife doesn’t have to forgive me when I rage at strangers. My kids don’t have to keep showing up when I’m tired and distant. But they do. And that’s the mycorrhizae. That’s the network underpinning us all. Kindness isn’t niceness. It’s not always easy, and it’s certainly not always clean. It’s the choice to keep making room even when the bench is full, even when you’re exhausted, even when you feel the person doesn’t deserve it. I’m still learning. I still rage on that clogged-bowel of a highway. But I’m trying. And maybe that’s the first step—wanting to be kinder than you currently are. We try, we fail, we try again. We reach into our roots for the strength to try it a different way. My bench is getting full. But I can always make more room. Get full access to Nick Walton at nickfromoregon.substack.com/su
