simple action saturday : say “Yes, let’s!”

"Come over around six," Lisa said. 

David and I had just finished working with an amazing group of educators in Hastings, Nebraska, for two days. Lisa was one of them, the organizer of the event. "Around six, and we'll have some dinner with a few friends." We went back to our hotel rooms to crash for a while, and headed out to Lisa and Harry's place just before six.

 Lynne greeted us in the yard. "I'm the official welcoming committee," she said. Lisa appeared on the porch. The fantastic Jack appeared with his wife, Judy. Let's forget the fact that in hugging Judy, I almost knocked her down the stairs because she had just had knee surgery and was a tiny bit wobbly. 

We went in, talking. I started making photos, talking to Lisa about art in her house. "Folks are out in the backyard in the sun," she said. "Why don't you go on out there?"

I walked down the stairs from the kitchen to the back door, and opened it.

There in front of me was Elizabeth.

And yet, oddly, Elizabeth doesn't live in Hastings, Nebraska. She lives in Houston, Texas.

"WHERE AM I?" I thought to myself. I have walked through a back door in Hastings, Nebraska, into Houston, Texas. "WHAT?!" I screamed, lunging forward to hug Elizabeth. "My head just exploded. WHERE AM I?" I turned to see Elizabeth's partner, Maxine, quietly knitting and smiling at me. "OH MY GOD!" I yelled. "WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?"

"Didn't you see my note on Facebook?" Maxine asked with a smile.

Oh, my. I had posted on Facebook: "Hey, let's go to Hastings, Nebraska!" just before leaving on the three planes that would take me to Hastings. "Yes, let's!" Maxine wrote in response. I smiled when I saw her post–"oh, that's funny" I thought.

AND YET HERE THEY WERE. In Lisa and Harry's back yard. With a little handknit sock monkey.

David and I first met Elizabeth and Maxine when they drove from Houston to Austin to a book reading I did at Bookwoman in Austin. At the time, they had already signed up for our Life is a Verb retreat, which they attended shortly after the reading. And there, in that beautiful retreat space, they met Lisa and her partner, Harry. And all of a sudden, here we all were, together again. 

It was like so much magic.

They are like so much magic.

They had simply picked up and driven all night to be there for dinner. To surprise me and David in Lisa and Harry's back yard.

"That," my friend Kathryn Ruth Schuth wrote on Facebook, "That is an elaborate gesture."

Life needs to include more elaborate gestures pointed in the direction of other people. Indeed it does.

Show up for someone today. Maybe that doesn't mean an 860-mile drive, though that would be fun and you could visit yarn stores along the way in Salina, Kansas, and make someone's head explode, like mine did. Maybe it just means picking up the phone, leaving some daffodils on someone's porch, making a little goody bag for someone with all the makings for S'mores in it, telling someone a story that will encourage them, treating someone to a glorious massage, accepting the invitation to take a walk together, taking time to write a letter to someone you haven't connected with in a while, sending some encouragement through the airwaves to a friend who seems down or overwhelmed, helping a friend pack and move, picking up the slack for someone, choosing acceptance over blame, showing up at an old friend's wedding in Hawaii, including an extra stop in your next trip.

Show up for someone else today.

Say, "Yes, let's!"