The Measure of Humanity

Home is the place where, when you go there, they have to take you in.

Robert Frost

A week or two ago, I got a new job. No, I wasn’t looking for employment, but my husband and Daughter #1–out of desperation–were forced to designate me as the family Emergency Substitute Doorstop. It’s an unpaid position that has absolutely no prestige or guaranteed tenure,  but it is an essential service and does provide a couple of minutes of personal satisfaction on a regular basis.

Our home has three exterior doors (not counting the basement one, which we hardly ever use), each requiring a four-step entrance. Years ago, we figured out that it was far more efficient to unload groceries from the garage if we had a small rubber wedge to slip under the garage entrance and hold the door open while we unloaded our regular Saturday shopping excursions to Sam’s Club or Costco. It was a very effective solution–until a couple of weeks ago, when my 17-month-old grandson found the little doorstop as he was on his daily inspection of all the stuff on the floor within his reach. The doorstop disappeared. So far, two weeks of searching have not turned up a single clue as to which wormhole it disappeared into.

This is not unusual. One afternoon, when I inadvertently left my computer open on the small table next to where I generally work, out of the corner of my eye, I saw my computer mouse disappear down the hallway in the clutches of this adorable little thief. Two days later, my toes bumped into the lost mouse when I tried to put on my favorite slippers. Not long after that, Daughter #1 reported finding small segments of dried-up cheese sticks in several of the shoe boxes in her closet. At least we know our disturber is not a poltergeist.

Then, a couple of Saturdays ago, when Daughter #1 and my brother unloaded the weekly grocery haul, it became obvious that my limited weight-carrying ability (a function of my aging heart, sigh) was less productive than my total-body doorstop capacity. So I held the door open as the other two tag-teamed cases of storage goods and perishables down to the freezer and shelves in the basement.

It was some consolation when yesterday I watched as the Jordan School District Superintendent held the door dozens of times for twenty or so members of the Jordan Education Foundation as we streamed into and back out of 15 schools where we honored Outstanding Educators of the Year for 2022-23. It was personally satisfying to note that though the superintendent has considerably more education and an atlas-level weight more of responsibility than I have ever aspired to, he took his job as Emergency Substitute Doorstop every bit as seriously as I do mine.

I admit that I am often so preoccupied with my current worries that I dismiss or even totally overlook the small but thoughtful gestures people around me have offered on my behalf—like the kindergarten teacher who taught most of my children to read. When one of my kids, I think Son #5, who still loves to talk, was chattering away in class about how much his mom loved fresh garden peas, this near retirement-aged widow showed up at my door the following Saturday morning with a grocery bag full of just-picked peas from her large and fruitful garden. Then she sat beside me on my front porch, and we visited as she helped me slip the peas from their shells to ready them for my family’s dinner that night.

I thought of the efforts of my Uncle Tom, whose advancing age and mental deterioration from Down Syndrome didn’t deter him from serving cheerfully in his local church congregation. For many years, early every Sunday morning, my stalwart uncle stuffed 50 or so blank tithing receipt forms into their envelopes, carried the stack to church with him, and loaded them into a small box mounted by the Bishop’s door so that his fellow church members could easily slip the packets into their pockets or purses for later completion. I’m guessing no other members of his ward even came close to being as faithful in their callings as he.

It’s easy to forget that if we want to accomplish miracles, “out of small things proceedeth that which is great”. My students and I used to read the words of one of the great poets of the 17th century, John Milton, whose loss of vision as a fairly young man forced him to depend wholly on his daughters for virtually every need–even writing 11,000 lines of one of the most famous poems in the English language, Paradise Lost, after he was completely blind. But it is his simple words in sonnet XIX (On His Blindness) that have reverberated in my memory over the years. “They also serve, who only stand and wait.”

The measure of most good folks I know is not the loud, unruly petitions for self-serving change marked in the columns of the daily media, but the small, consistent, and unheralded acts of thoughtful consideration that lift the paths of those around us. Service is the first great marker of true humanity.