Generosity
On a Sunday evening in late summer, my wife and I follow the curve of a two-lane highway. A trailer hauling a used fridge for our garage jolts and lurches against the hitch behind us as the road leads us into a molten sun suspended over a hazed horizon. In the gloaming, everything seems to shed light, the dry corn stalks in their rows, the clumps of horses bent low over the grass; the brown sheen of their coats ripples in the light. A flock of airborne geese glides in loose formation over the tobacco fields.
I pull into my neighborhood and stop next to a neighbor walking two tan and white spaniels. She tells me the book arrived, and for a moment I don’t know what to say. It is surreal. The book launched just two days prior and now she’s the first person I know to have a physical copy. Up until that moment the book always existed in the abstract. Just words on a computer screen—a possibility, mercurial and illusive. Now, after six years of struggling over words and sentences and commas, of spending mornings rearranging sentences only to put them back the way they were, it is out in the world. I have the feeling that if I blink, it will vanish.
In the days that follow, when I see people with the book, a sense of trepidation rushes over me. I feel the weight of being entrusted with someone's time and attention. I feel the disquieting vulnerability as my protective veneer is peeled back and my thoughts and feelings are exposed. And I hope so many things—that the sentences flow and the stories honor each baby and family. That the book is worthy of readers’ time and investment.
It strikes me how every time someone buys the book it is an act of generosity. Every time someone shares a post, leaves an Amazon review, asks for a signature, or offers words of encouragement, it is a profound act of kindness and generosity.
That next week I am touched again and again by people’s acts of kindness. The best bottle of scotch I’ve ever owned arrives on my doorstep from my sister and brother-in-law, a colleague in my leadership cohort sends me the book for a signature, my parents in-law order ten books to give away and my mother tells every one of her friends about the launch. There are things I could never have expected. A friend hosts a book give away and a neonatologist I trained with invites me to join him for an Instagram event. I’m amazed at the people who notice and take the time and energy to come alongside me—a friend invites me to sign books at her gym opening, friends invite us to dinner to celebrate, and a hospital CEO in Ohio orders books for his board and management team. At my own hospital the family support network shares a post about the book with their families and the chief nursing officer offers to host a hospital signing event. Each act leaves me humbled and thankful.
In a world clambering to be heard – a world of overflowing email inboxes, phones pinging with texts, and a rising flood of social media posts – attention is a precious commodity. So, each time I give a thanks that doesn’t seem adequate and hope the stories that shaped my life and became a part of me will touch readers the way they touched me. Because, after all, they are not my stories. They never were. They are our collective stories, those of the babies and their families and the healthcare workers and all of us as people, because these are the stories that make us human.