A Bit of Heart

On a chilly November morning, I found Jonelle working in the garden center. It was the right place to be, standing next to a rack of wintery hellebores with shy white flowers, when she said, “Dimity is the heart of downtown.”

Dimity O’Neil, plant person extraordinaire and friend to pretty much everyone, had passed away a few weeks earlier, but Jonelle’s present tense seemed apt to me. Dimity’s heart and her cultivating care can be seen throughout downtown Mount Vernon, in almost every landscaping design and planter. She brought color, texture, and flora diversity to our town decades ago when the tired standard was marigolds and stripes of grass.

She tended the unfurling and nurtured the flowering. With her wild curls, her bright eyes behind those big glasses, and her ever-present smile, she turned her face, as if to the sun, toward anyone she engaged in conversation.

Arrangement on display at Dimity’s memorial.

Jonelle added what Dimity had given to her, “When I was a new mom, she was so supportive of me, but she was also supportive when I came back to work. Someone so strong, so passionate—it’s what I want to be.”

As the Co-op celebrates 50 years, Dimity shines as an example of all those who have contributed talent, hard work, and spirit to our community.

Fifty years of Co-op translates to fifty years of a physical place, a place that smells of spices, fresh produce and coffee, a place that has been a gathering spot for friends and neighbors, a vector for education and a source of community strength.

Fifty years of Co-op means the Skagit Valley has benefitted from fifty years of commitment to enduring beliefs: supporting access to healthy food grown in a way that is good for the earth; supporting farmers and suppliers who grow and make things sustainably; being a pillar in the national co-op community with a member-owned, not-for-profit economic model.

And it also works out to fifty years of people: thousands of people certainly, who have made—who are making—the Co-op.

I have a friend, let’s call him Matt, because that is his name. He lives now on the East Coast, but when I was in school, and we saw each other regularly, he had a comforting habit. If I was distressed (lost my keys, lost a computer file, lost my composure), he would say, calmly and cheerfully, “How can I help?”. The truth was, much of the time, Matt couldn’t solve my dilemma, but his willingness to help was so down-to-earth and genuine, it made whatever was going on feel lighter and more manageable.

These are the people who come to mind—the ones who have held up the Co-op by their willingness to jump in and be of service. The ones who Marge Piercy writes of in her poem, “To Be of Use”: those who “do what has to be done, again and again.”

Dimity’s memorial at Christianson’s Nursery

I have been struggling for the right word for those who contribute in this way (and you, my reader, are quite possibly among them). “Unsung hero” gets bandied about a lot, and “hero” itself is especially overused, applied to everyone from yesterday’s winning quarterback to a celebrity strumming a guitar at a benefit concert. I’m a little jaded on “heroes” unless a life is being saved.  But all these people, past and present, sometimes acknowledged, sometimes not, contributing in small and large ways—shall we call them the Co-op’s hidden heart?

If I tried to thank by name those hidden hearts who have made the Co-op the Co-op, I would inevitably leave out hundreds of them. Carpenters, cashiers, cooks, and cartoonists; dishwashers and designers; meat-cutters, cheese-cutters, and those trimming vegetables in the back room; night-time stockers, day-time stockers, and everyone who pulls forward a carton of milk to make it easier for someone else; writers and reps; bookkeepers, bakers, buyers, board members, beekeepers, brewers of beer. Members and customers and volunteers. The frontline workers; those behind the lines. The workers in the farm fields, in the factories, in the warehouses, in the delivery trucks. People moving palettes in the dark, and moving mops in the kitchen. People who spend hours in front of computer screens and long to stretch their backs. People who answer the question “Where is the bathroom?”  20 times each day and keep smiling. People piling up sandbags, people putting up holiday decorations, people in long meetings in the early days, trying to keep the Co-op afloat. Some staff, some not. Sometimes paid, sometimes not. People who left with a celebratory party and some cake in the break room; people who picked up a last paycheck and said quiet goodbyes.

How lucky we are to have each other.

And the beauty of this hidden heart can be found in the long-time Co-op line, “Anyone can join.”

I recently listened to an episode of NPR’s Hidden Brain, interviewing Gillian Sandstrom, a British professor. She has researched the interactions we have with casual acquaintances—or even strangers—and finds that those brief moments we take to say hello and connect with others we meet in public increase our happiness more than we might think.

Writing in The New York Times, David Sax explored the goodness of connecting with those we don’t even know, “Engagement with strangers is at the core of our social contract… anytime we ignore strangers in our vicinity, whether because of fear, bigotry or the everyday convenience and efficiency of digital technology, we weaken that contract . . . strangers connect us to the community, teach us empathy, build civility and are full of surprise and potentially wonder.”

These interactions strengthen the fabric of our community. And yes, each one of us can join in.

A few weeks ago, I walked into the store, and from behind the registers, Michael turned around and called out, “Hi, Beverly.” Just that. It warmed me all day, it still warms me. How good it feels to be seen, to be welcomed. When I get up to the cashier stand, Baiyu doesn’t need my member number. He knows it even if it’s been months since I’ve come in on his cashiering day. He remembers it even though he jokes with me, “I’ve tried to forget it.”

No public place that I regularly frequent allows me more opportunities for these gentle interactions—with old friends, with acquaintances, with strangers—than does the Co-op. The Co-op is where connection can abide.

Here is to Dimity, who gave so much heart to her work and to all those she met—and in so doing, gave us the perfect example of how to join in and create community.

Here is to everyone, over all the years, who has given the Co-op a bit of their hearts, and suffused this place with both spark and stability.

Here’s to taking a bit of heart into the Co-op encounters we have in the years left to us.