Everyday subversion.

• Author: Solnit, Rebecca
• Position: Migrant workers - Essay

I shop at two fishmongers' and butchers' kiosks, where the men stand all day in chilly spaces, around meat that needs cutting up and bad smells and vacillating customers. Their steady kindness impresses me as much as the devotion of the nurses I encountered during a medical episode.

I'm equally impressed by my immigrant mail carrier, who barely speaks English but handles my odd and sometimes voluminous flow of mail with grace and precision, and by the post office workers : who handled the druggie kids of my old neighborhood and the non-English-speakers of my new one with polite patience, and by the guys who fix my car so well and so cheerfully.

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The family that grows the pomegranates and raises the honey I buy at their farmers' market booth dispenses these treasures with a warmth and immediacy that is as sweet as the stuff I carry away (the grandmother now hails me as an old friend). All around them are people who tend both to their plants and their customers with care and attention.

None of these generous people compares to the mostly immigrant staff who took care of my mother during the last five years of her decline from Alzheimer's. It's a crew I came to think of as angels and saints and bodhisattvas. The system ensured that my mother's needs would be met, and the management principles were admirable, but what mattered was the constant tending by people who were kind, patient, and personal, all day every day, all the way to the end.

This summer my dentist, who escaped from Vietnam when she was thirteen, wept when I told her of my mother's death; after twenty years, she's a friend as well as an excellent health care provider. We talked about her parents' care and her daughter's high school career. Finally, she cleaned my teeth.

These people I cross paths with could have given the minimum, and there are plenty of people who do so with their jobs--and I've met them too, but these people gave the maximum. They gave from their hearts, and their hearts were not for sale.

Over and over again, almost every day of my life in the city, I see people who give away what money cannot buy: a grace, a kindness, an authentic connection and recognition of our shared humanity. These are my heroes. They demonstrate the use and value of dignity, wholeheartedness...