Human. Humanity. What do they mean?

Two words so familiar I have never stopped to ponder their meanings until recently, with a surfeit of calamities mercilessly altering every aspect of life as we know it. 2020 has been… quite a year. Rumor has it from now on the number itself will be used as a verb. As in: “The toddlers twenty-twentied their playroom in no time flat.”

I started looking for definitions of human and humanity to perhaps explain reasons for and ways through the mess we are in. I sought simple definitions my weary mind could grasp, something to shine light in the darkness of this time and tether me to former times, to past generations and civilizations who endured incredible difficulties but indeed lived to tell. Perhaps we might too? The lifeboat, er, the definition I was looking for I hoped would buoy confidence that we are not all just wild animals living a savage life, and that there is sure wisdom to be gained from our current trials.

But the definitions I found were unsatisfactory until I came across this short, sweet and encompassing beam of light: To be human is to exist and to know it.

Bastion del Carmen, Colonia de Sacramento, Uruguay ~ photo: k. sunde

To know we exist.

But what accessorizes humanity? Beyond knowing that we are here (and despite having no context for our existence, no guaranteed answers of where we came from or where we are going) what does humanness come with? What are the sides we can choose from to accompany our feast of humanity?

The broad answer, for me: our stories. Humans and humanity come with stories. No other living thing- from aster to zinnia, from amoeba to zygote- can create or use language to relay experiences, feelings and memories from the past. To tell stories.

When I was on the newspaper staff in high school, I realized I was too slow and uncompetitive to ever want the lead story, to ever be assigned to go out and get the scoop. But Human Interest stories? Now that I could do. I love a good story; I love our human stories, even if I find it difficult sometimes to love some of us humans, myself included.

Our stories provide lessons and meaning; they mark our places in time and the people who surround us as our life seasons pass by, sometimes to return, sometimes not. At present, the stories we are living and relaying are mostly filled with difficulty and heartache, and just a bit of intermingled joy. In this space, I want to share with you such stories and more about humans and humanity, and I hope to include your stories as well. How that will happen will be seen in time. But think of this space as an Adult Treasury of Stories, just like the Children’s Treasuries we cherished being read from at bedtime when we were little. Some told tales of monsters and witches; others of magic and princesses. This collection of human stories will contain a bit of that, a bit of this. Some of these stories are true; some akin to fairy tales. All are vehicles for pondering the questions and answers of humanness and humanity.

So here’s a story to start us off:

One recent morning, my husband and I woke to find Goldilocks asleep on our sofa. This, by the way, is a true story.

The previous night had been short of sweet dreams because our large furry dog that sleeps outside carried on for hours over raccoons in the yard next door. Finally, about two o’clock I brought him inside for the remainder of the night and I went to sleep.

My alarm went off at six and I went downstairs to put the kettle on. As I walked past the living room, I saw in the gray dawn that the sofa cushions strewn all over the floor. The dog did this? was my first thought as I looked around for him, but he was not there. He is old and arthritic: it’s been years since he plopped on the couch, and he was never one to mess with soft furnishings. So this behavior was completely out of character.

Then, something caught my eye under one of the cushions on the floor. I reached out my right foot to kick it and thus revealed a pair of black boots. I knew they belonged to no one in our household. My heart started to pound, knowing someone had been inside the house, and maybe was still there.

A pause here for detail: the boots seemed to be those of a woman. A tiny wash of relief came over me. I looked around the room and saw my laptop on the coffee table, thus made another quick assumption: This wasn’t a burglar. Then I ran upstairs to wake my husband.

Breathlessly I called his name, shook him by the shoulder, and hastily explained… Someone in the house. Boots on the floor. He rose with a “Huh-wha-whe?!?” and went straight to his closet for an item he had literally purchased two days before: a gorgeous, very expensive, Swedish-made axe. 

Together we went downstairs and I threw on the lights in the living room so he could clearly see the boots. Funny, I just remembered I actually asked him if they were his- which obviously they were not- given the style and apparent size. I also asked him about the sofa cushions; he’d been the last person in the room the night before and though he’s sometimes messy by my standard, this mess would have been as uncharacteristic for him as it was for the dog.

The house has more than one entrance on the ground floor, so my husband and I went together from room to room, throwing on lights, checking locks. Should we call the police? I wondered aloud, but I don’t remember what he answered. His heart must have been pounding as much as my own, and well, there was the matter of Stormbreaker over his shoulder: the literal weight of the world.

When we finally made it through the house to the family room at the very back, there on the floor was our dog, a good-morning grin on his face. What the heck had gone on???  I was asking the mute muppet as my husband checked the lock on the door. It was the last door to be checked, and it was locked. All the doors were locked. The house was completely locked.

And then I saw it: a blonde head poking out of a blue afghan on the wicker sofa. Goldilocks.

As she came-to and began unfurling from the afghan and rising from to her feet, I began grilling her like a Headmistress. How had she gotten inside the house? She could provide no answer, but emitted a machine-gun strew of apologies mixed with a story line about having had too much to drink the night before. It it had been a very long time since she’d had anything to drink, she said, but her dog recently, tragically died. She kept asking, “I’m not at my friends? I thought this was my friend’s house? I put that question to rest, declaring I didn’t know her; did she know me? She did not. But she still could not explain how she got inside the house.

I suppose we could tell she was harmless and my husband had not needed the axe, thank God. He didn’t join me in scolding or questioning her, and indeed had more or less left us alone in the room (I found out later he was rechecking all the locks on the doors. and the security of the windows). The dog, by the way, had been bringing his arthritic mass to standing and was wagging his tale and smiling in my direction. New friend! See new friend? he seemed to say. At some point I believed I lashed out at him with a wtf you useless guard dog, and Goldilocks more or less agreed. “I petted him when I came in,” she proffered.

Picture here a whole line of those shoulder shrugging emojis; particularly the female with blonde hair wearing a purple top. Shrugging; having no idea. Not a clue at all. This was the woman before me: the expression, the blonde hair (thus the Goldilocks moniker my husband came up with). The difference was she had no explanation for her presence and she was not wearing a purple top. Instead she was wearing a black tie-dye tank top and tan skinny pants. She was very pretty and had likely showered more recently than I had. I think she had on white socks. Her boots on the living room floor were short, biker style with big silver rings at the ankles. They were really cute and if I thought they would fit me, I might have demanded them as payment for her stay at Mi Casa Apparently Es Su Casa Hotel.

When I later relayed this story to a friend, she said, “Knowing you, you probably let her shower while you cooked her breakfast. “ For the record, I did not. Still berating the young woman for her presence inside- and I cannot stress this enough- the completely locked house- I escorted her to the front door. She stopped by the living room to tug on her boots as I made a back-track through the other rooms looking for a jacket? a purse? a cell phone? Anything she might have brought with her. I found nothing. The same friend who wondered about breakfast and a shower also offered this explanation: “Now hear me out,” she wrote in a text. “Maybe, just maybe she came down the chimney?

It was a cold morning. As I walked out onto the porch with the young woman, I thought of lending her a sweater. But I really didn’t want to see her again, if/when she would come return it. Or did I?

The first rays of sun were appearing over the hills and housetops in front of the house.  I asked if she had a place to go. She said yes, she lived here (meaning in town, she clarified; not here here, which of course I already knew). With every other utterance Goldilocks was still professing, “I’m so sorry!” I dealt my last, best stepmother scold.

“Stop saying you are sorry. Just don’t ever do this again. To me or anyone else. Or to yourself.” I spoke in earnest: “On a human level, I am truly concerned about you. Are you going to be okay?”

Her expression was not confident, but she answered affirmatively.  She said she knew she needed to address her drinking problem and then, “I know you don’t want me to say sorry anymore, but… I truly am.” She turned and walked down the sidewalk, opened the wrought-iron gate, and headed away south.