My aunt always told me to write thank-you notes
Unsung heroes lurk in the shadows of every community and workplace. Troubleshooters, first responders, sidewalk psychologists, arms to lean on, shoulders to cry on, resourceful MacGyver types, Johnny-on-the-spots, ride-givers, toolbox-carriers and solution-finders help the rest of us poor slobs get through life. While some college kids dump stale beer all over the dormitory stairway, others will give you a ride to the bus station or take notes for you when you’ve broken your arm. What’s the difference? While some corporate cubicle denizens gossip, manipulate and malinger, others invariably make the coffee, refill the copier paper and bring cookies. Why the difference? Why do some drivers throw cigarette butts in your driveway while others always have jumper cables when you need them? Are there truly two kinds of people?
Where is this all going?
I know a thing or two about appreciation. Just a year ago, a few of us were looking at the Matinicus airstrip in 92 feet of north Atlantic ocean, hanging onto our extremely handy piece of floating fiberglass freight box. As the first anniversary of our airplane ditching, great north-end swim-team bonding activity, lobster boat rescue, and uniquely multi-modal transportation experience comes around, I find myself led to express a spirit of gratitude for a long list of people, and for things both tangible and abstract.
We owe a debt of gratitude to the heavy lifters, the people who do things like methodically pack the entire contents of an elementary school into roughly 17,000 cardboard banana boxes and carry them one at a time out of the way so the schoolhouse ceiling can be repaired. Stuff like that doesn’t just happen magically.
Thanks to the women who set up the refreshments after a funeral. Thanks to the packrats who somewhere in their estimable heap have the part we desperately need when there’s no getting to the hardware store. Thanks to the guys who come out in the storms to help clear trees out of the road, who deal with the town Christmas tree, who load the trash trucks and unload the lumber trucks, who substitute for each other, and who repair things without having been officially enlisted, just because things need fixing. Thanks to the computer wizards who salvage our grandmother’s photographs, the backyard mechanics and the folks who bring the casseroles.
On a serious note, as a community we owe a nod of appreciation to our informal hospice volunteers. The small group of people who call Matinicus home has, in recent years, gained some experience in this field. The people who make it possible for their neighbors to live out their last few weeks at home on the island are not “saints”—for that makes it sound like it’s easy for them because they are somehow “different.” No. They are simply very hard-working neighbors.
Of course, everyone comes running when there is a boat in trouble, or a fire, or somebody injured. That goes without saying—and even the scurviest pirate and scroungiest deck ape will do all he can to help under those circumstances. In fact, that reality of island living (or “isolated location” work in any setting, I am quite sure) disproves everything we think we know about “good people and bad people.” That “two kinds of people” thinking doesn’t hold water. The “good guy/bad guy” categories fall apart in a remote-location crisis. Did you see the movie The Perfect Storm? Who jumped overboard at great personal risk to rescue the fisherman pulled under and about to drown? The guy who hated his guts, that’s who. That is how it works here in the real world. Some of the locals might say, “Thanks, enemies, for being there when we needed you.”
Anyway, while I can’t help but go over the July 17, 2011, rescue in my head this month, thinking of all the people who most certainly did not wake up that morning planning to be first responders, and certain that they—all of them—had a far worse day than I did for several reasons, I am reminded of so many acts of community spirit, helpfulness and mutual support that are far less dramatic and almost invisible. Here’s to the folks who never get in the papers, even though they deal with the blood, strain their muscles, stay up late, work through the schematic, listen to the whining, chase the ghost in the machine, endure the weather, mop up the mess, babysit the helpless, give us a tow, battle the cyber-demons, take in the lost puppy, improvise the repair and make the impossible happen. Thank you.
Eva Murray is a freelance contributor living on Matinicus.