Is it kindness, or is it anxiety?

Reflecting on the ways we get steady.

Cape buffalo with oxpeckers perched on its horns. Source: Shutterstock

My grandparents were helpers. After they retired in their early 50s (I know, I know), they always had at least one family member they were assisting every day. Every morning they would stop at my great, great aunt’s house, delivering syrup-drenched pancakes and sausage from Hardee’s. She’d lounge until noon in her velvet bathrobe, looking out the kitchen window, marveling at the birds feasting from the feeders my grandparents kept full. She lived into her 90s, defying all my syrup-based assumptions.

Like her parents, my mother’s prescription for any bad feeling was to do something for someone else. She’d dive into a frenzied generosity at the holidays, our furniture buried under a mountain of gift bags for every family member, every coworker, every church member. When she was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma at 51, she proceeded to write an encouraging letter to everyone she knew.