By Dana Sawyer,
Recently, I saw a photo of a church sign in Orono that read, “Tough Times never last, but Tough People do.” I liked the sign and it made me reflect on what it means to be “tough.” I decided that the best sort of toughness is a dogged resilience mixed with fidelity to kindness, patience, and community spirit.
This all sounds a bit abstract, but at the time of reflection, it wasn’t even remotely vague. My thoughts traveled immediately to my childhood in Washington County, and more specifically to my family’s behavior during blizzards. Whenever a big storm blew in, and as nightfall approached, my father would rig up in his green rubber boots, wool pants and coat to tramp through the drifts on Main St. (the only road through town) in search of stranded travelers. In those days, before cell phones, reliable weather forecasting, or all-wheel drive vehicles, getting caught in a ferocious storm was easier and more dangerous, so dad would tramp through town looking for wayward travelers to invite home.
With the electricity out, our family was drawn down into the core of the house, to settle around the wood stove in the parlor, foregoing our bedrooms until it was time to sleep under a pile of quilts. However, as children we often weren’t able to sleep upstairs on those nights because our beds were filled with strangers grateful for a invitation to avoid a night of freezing weather in a buried car. This wasn’t a hardship for my siblings and me, since we reveled in“camping out” in front of the warm stove downstairs.
The most memorable of these snowstorms began on December 30th, 1962. Everyone in our part of Maine remembers that two-day blizzard, not only because of its proximity to New Year’s Eve but because we were blindsided by it. The weather report that morning called for flurries, but more than two feet of snow fell in 24 hours and the temp dropped below zero. So my dad initiated his usual search and my family ended up with four guests: a truck driver, a salesman and an elderly couple.
Thirty-six hours later, I, at eleven years old, jumped from a second-story window into a snowdrift and proceeded to shovel out the front door. Then the salesman and I searched for his car, buried so deeply in a drift that we located it by using our shovel handles as avalanche probes. Over the years, other people stayed with us also, and what impressed me was my parents’ easy generosity. “It’s just doing what’s right,” my father would always say.
Maine winters were tougher then, but we still deal with tough weather, endured it with a toughness of our own. Now, during this epidemic, we will again come through, understanding that kindness, rather than selfish actions like hoarding or looting, will get us there. And as I learned long ago, kindness can even be fun.
Dana Sawyer is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy and Religion at the Maine College of Art and author of Aldous Huxley, A Biography as well as Huston Smith: Wisdomseeker, the authorized biography of the renowned authority on World Religions. He lives in Blue Hill with his artist wife, Stephani. www.dana-sawyer.com