When I was in the fourth grade, I worked part-time as a paper boy. Mrs. Stanley was one of my customers. She'd watch me coming down her street, and by the time I'd biked up to her doorstep, there would be a cold drink waiting. I'd sit and drink while she talked.
Mrs. Stanley talked mostly about her dead husband. "Mr. Stanley and I went shopping this morning," she'd say. The first time she said that, soda (汽水) went up my nose.
I told my father how Mrs. Stanley talked as if Mr. Stanley were still alive. Dad said she was probably lonely, and that I ought to sit and listen and nod my head and smile, and maybe she'dwork it out of her system.So that's what I did, and it turned out Dad was right. After a while she seemed content to leave her husband over at the cemetery (墓地).
I finally quit delivering newspapers and didn't see Mrs. Stanley for several years. Then we crossed paths at a church fund-raiser(募捐活动). She was spooning mashed potatoes and looking happy. Four years before, she'd offer her paper boy a drink to have someone to talk with. Now she had friends. Her husband was gone, but life went on.
I am living in the city now, and my paper boy is a lady named Edna with three kids. She asks me how I'm doing. When I don't say "fine", she sticks around to hear my problems. She's lived in the city for most of her life, but she knows about community. Community isn't so much a place as it is a state of mind. You find it whenever people ask you how you're doing because they care, and not because they're getting paid to do so. Sometimes it's good to just smile, nod your head and listen.
