BABETTE

 I chatted with my friend Babette the other day. She lives in Manhattan, New York, in an apartment building. She has lived there for a long time and knows her neighbors well. I love to hear about her neighbors. In New York where the sheer number of people per square mile, immense, they are all still wearing masks. Because, as we both agreed, there is just not enough known still about these viruses. But even with so much unknown and worry for the health and safety of all of us, we still long for interaction.

Babette told me about her neighbors down the hall. A nice family from Tel Aviv. I don’t remember the husbands name, she didn’t remember what he does for a living. But she told me that his wife, Etsey, is younger than him and they have a couple of little boys. Etsey is a stay at home mom.

When the pandemic started, Etsey told Babette that she missed her family, she missed being social, she missed hugging people. She told her how she missed her grandmother and even her grandmothers dog. She wanted to be able to interact with others again. 

In 2021 one of Etsey’s sister in-laws died of Covid. Etsey’s husband took off work, left his family in Manhattan and travelled to Tel Aviv to be a support for his family. While there, during their time of morning, he found, as many of us do when a family member dies, that family can be very harsh. 

Fast forward to February of 2022. Babette saw Etsey in the hall of their apartment complex and they were chatting. 

Babette asked how she was doing, how her family was. Etsey confided “that people are rude and disgusting”. She went on to tell of family being uncaring  and strangers being hateful. 

Poor Etsey had witnessed the harsh side of todays world and was teetering on the edge of loosing her love for fellow man. 

This sweet lady who wanted to share compassion and kindness had been pushed to a point she did not recognize. Where she saw the ugly in people. 

Babette said that she hopes Etsey gets beyond the stark reality that people are disgusting and rude and bad tempered. And gets to be the sweet lady she knows her neighbor to be. 

Babette and I agreed that this is a really good example of why living the example you want the world to be, is so vital, now more than ever. 

I think it’s easy to see the ugly in the world, it’s all around us, and fall into line with it. But if we all lived the example we learned as children, in our homes and out in the world, we would see that there is hope for today and for tomorrow. 

I love chatting with Babette, she sees things from a different vantage point than I do. We all live here together. Love should be priority one!