I nearly missed seeing it.

We’d stopped on the way to the beach for gas. As Todd did the pumping, I watched the people. The woman yelling at a man, “YOU talk to her! She’s YOUR mother!” The entwined teenage couple gazing at each other so hungrily that they tripped over the curb. The dad shouting at the crying toddler, “I TOLD YOU, I’M NOT BUYING IT! GET YOUR BUTT IN THE CAR AND STOP WHINING!” The grandma walking the little girl inside, stopping by the door to kiss the top of her head.

I thought about this messy combo of people and our messy world and my messy self. We were on our way to spend the long weekend with Angie and Kevin at their beach house. I’ve known them for forty years but we’d never spent a weekend together. Three days was a long time–long enough for them to discover that I’m not as fun as they might’ve expected. I mean, I love myself, but I hate playing cards, I burst into tears without warning (even to myself) if I don’t get enough alone time, and, thanks to umpteen skin cancer removals, I can’t stay in the sun for long. The perfect beach guest, right?

But then Todd opened the door, handed me a pack of pistachios, and I noticed something interesting. No, not the hairy topless man lugging a twelve-pack, but what was happening above his head: a mother bird carrying a worm to the nest she’d built in the quick stop sign. Her babies were tucked within the u of refuel.

Was that really the best place to build a nest? In all that chaos, the yelling and the shouting, the tripping and the kissing, the gasoline fumes and the car exhaust?

A couple of weeks ago, I remembered the nest again. I was doing my Meals on Wheels route and pulled into Mr. Knighten’s* driveway.

What the heck? Not only was his driveway empty (what happened to his home health aide?) but there he was, leaning precariously over the porch railing, wielding a sharp pair of loppers! He had two metal walkers up there with him, one balanced half on the porch and half on the wheelchair ramp, and the other placed behind him. It was hot and his shirt was filthy. His pants hung low. His diaper sagged.

“Mr. Knighten, what are you doing out here? Where’s your aide?”

He licked at the sweat dripping into his mouth. “What does it look like I’m doing? I’m cutting these damn weeds!”

The sun glinted off three more clippers set out on the railing.

“Sir, where’s your aide?”

“Hell if I know,” Mr. Knighten said. “They cut her hours back. She probably thought it wasn’t worth it.”

I tried to steady the walker.

“Don’t!” he said. “I got it just right.”

“Can I call someone to help you?” I asked. “Do you have family around?”

He shook his head. “Just a nephew over in Easley. He’s at work.”

“Why don’t you take a break? I brought your meals. The hot one is paprika chicken. It smells good.”

He frowned but put down the loppers. I tried to help him inside, but he waved me away.

“Sorry,” I said.

“It’s okay, little girl.” He shuffled, turning himself around. “I can do it. See?” A third walker was just inside. “Don’t you worry. I’m not dead yet.”

I’m sixty years old. Being called a little girl felt like a kiss on the top of my head.

A couple stops later, a truck blocked the Bakers’* driveway. Two men leaned on a shiny metal wheelchair ramp they’d just installed over the stairs. The men waved at me and said good morning.

“What a nice ramp,” I said as I walked through the weeds. I hesitated before stepping on it. “Is it okay for me to use it?”

“Sure!” said the man with the yellow cap. “You’re the first one!”

“Yeah,” said the man with the tool belt. “You can christen it!”

Mr. Baker must have heard us because he came to the door in his bathrobe, smiling as usual. He was thrilled with the ramp for his wife. He took his meals and thanked me and said what he always says, “Be careful out there in all that traffic.” (There isn’t any traffic, but it’s sweet of him to say it.) We said goodbye and he closed the door.

“The ramp works great,” I told the pair. “I didn’t fall through once.”

“That’s good.” said the tool belt man.

“But we’d be here to catch you if you did!” said the man with the cap.

I came home feeling absolutely buoyed. Like I’d been happily bobbing around in the ocean with people I love, covered with SPF 50, of course!

I thought of those four men and that nest again today when I reread a passage from Ferris, one of my favorite books by Kate DiCamillo. Have you read it? Life has gotten to be too much 10-year-old Ferris. Her favorite person in the world, her grandmother Charisse has a heart problem, there are raccoons in the attic which her father wants “to take care of,” and Pinky, her little sister and local terror, has just pulled out her two front teeth with a pair of pliers she stole from the hardware store as an “ecthperiment.” (It gives her a lisp.) Plus, her Uncle Ted keeps sending Ferris to spy on his beautician wife, Aunt Shirley, who recently left him. Unfortunately for Ferris’s hair, this results in a terrible perm. Uncle Ted knows all of this and yet tells her not to worry. “Go on, now,” he says. “Go out into the world.”

Maybe that’s the advice I need to keep hearing. Maybe we could all listen to it.

When we go out into the world and meet the chaos, person to person, (or person to mother bird) we get close enough to see the holiness that’s often tangled up within it. Sometimes there’s joy hidden in there too.

We can’t do everything. But we can do something. We can make our voices heard, we can make phone calls to people in charge, and we can get close to people who need our help.

It just might make us feel…refueled.

*All names from my Meals on Wheels clients have been changed.