Repair Cafe Now Open for Business

As much as it pains me to say nice things about him, I have to offer my thanks to my friend Dennis Buckley, editor of the Neighborhood Extra, that little slice of days-gone-by journalism tucked into our Saturday papers.  On page N 4 of yesterday's insert was the headline that is now happily stuck in my craw:  Repair Cafe open Sunday.

In the midst of so many dire things happening to us--cancer and terror and alligators and and and and and--it is good to remember the Repair Cafe, that magical place out back where people and things come together to patch up the holes, grease up the chains, replace the missing spokes of our lives.

Lately, I'd forgotten about the Repair Cafe, in part, because I'd developed a mild case of Prepositional Disorder.   The language of suffering, it turns out, leans heavily on the preposition "to."  As in, unbearable things happening to this country, to my mother, to my friends and family.  If you want to feel hopeless, go with to.  That tiny preposition packs a terrific punch in its ability to elicit both finger pointing and paralysis.  What can we possibly do, after all, when everything is happening to us?

Enter the Repair Cafe, the perfect yin to all these messy yangs.

Peeking into the window of someone's Repair Cafe yesterday, I was reminded of the under-reported acts of courage and kindness that people display in the face of tremendous challenges.  Brushing aside the cobwebs, I saw kindness quietly applied to a friend's ache, an undistracted ear lent to another, a handful of nuts and bolts offered freely.  And an awful lot of grit.  Through that window, I saw people reconfiguring and repairing their lives, tapping hope and strength where despair could so easily have been.

Even late last night, when heat and thirst awoke me,  I noticed a warm light coming from the small building, and I smiled, knowing someone inside was hard at work on her life, determined to write it for herself instead of having it written for her.

I fell asleep hard, then, my head filled with wild dreams of riding my bike into the wind, a chorus of birds cheering me on.


The Peace of Wild Things
By Wendell Berry

When despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting with their light. For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.