Spring is a cruel season.
In New Haven, the wind blows cold, the grass shrivels into mud, and the weeks trip over themselves until we are set loose into summer. In April of last year, in the absence of warmth and sun, with my coat buttoned to my chin, I started thinking about love. Not the romantic kind, or the platonic kind, or even the spiritual kind. But love. Small love. Love in fractions, love in all its forms, the part and the whole, the obvious and the discrete.
It started with a stranger. I was walking towards Payne Whitney Gymnasium, cutting through Morse. Inside the courtyard, flecks of snow loosened themselves from large piles, sticking to the beige walls. I wrapped my scarf around my neck, stepped over icy slush, and noticed spokes of grass poking through the frost. They were tiny and anemic looking, but still, it was a sign of spring.
The weather was the kind that hurts, with the type of sky that seems to be withering, that makes the Californians hate New England. Winter had persisted into spring and I was alone, on my way to practice. I knew the bus would be humid and that it would be dark soon.
At the wrought iron gate, I noticed a boy. He took his gloved hand out of his pocket to wipe his nose. Snot clotted on the fabric. Then, he swiped his ID card. At the same time, I hit the exit button. The lock clicked open and we were equidistant from the gate. Maybe it was the cold, maybe it was the gray, but I expected him to pull the gate open and push past. Instead, his glove wrapped around the iron. I hesitated. He tugged the gate open and stepped back, letting me walk through so that I would not have to touch the metal. It was so unnecessary, and as such, it was kind. It was a blooming, warming thing.
This is not a unique experience. People hold doors for each other all the time. It’s polite, it’s sociable. I also think it’s an act of love.
I walked through the open gate and said “thank you.” The breeze picked up; I tightened my scarf and had two thoughts. 1) I felt like the grass. Frozen at the root, green at the top. The interaction made the cold just a little less bitter, and my walk a little more bearable. 2) Small acts of love should not be forgotten.
We move about our lives thinking that other people aren’t affected by what we do. But so many of our choices spark connection and wrap us in community. Like opening a gate, or saying hello. The places and people and things that we engage with are steeped in love, we just don’t realize it. I see acts of love in coffee shops and malls, in beds and bodies, and right here, now. In this column, I will highlight all the ways love shows up in our lives so that it does not go unnoticed and slip away.
Think of this column as my bi-weekly love letter to you, reader. I will tell you stories and I will give you gory details. But always, my point will be love.