A few weeks ago I was in my campus office teaching when my computer suddenly rebooted, kicking me out. It took several minutes to get back into Zoom, but when I did, my students were still there, kindly waiting for me. Later, a young man came to figure out what had gone wrong with my computer. He told me that he had taken my English 101 class over Zoom in 2020, had gone on to earn a bachelor’s degree, and was now working at our college helping students and faculty with technology. I didn’t recognize him because I had only seen his face in a tiny square on my computer, and it reassured me to learn that he had appreciated my class back when I was so new at Zoom teaching.

I keep thinking about this young man. He told me he became a citizen last year and has petitioned to bring his mother. If she is able to come, she can then petition his younger siblings, something he can’t do. He knows that moving to the States and leaving her community won’t be easy for his mother, and he knows that even if she comes, she might not want to stay, but they are going to try.

Why is it so hard sometimes to remember how we are all connected? I helped this student with his writing in English, and a few years later he helped me with my computer. Most of the women who care for my mother, who has Alzheimer’s, are immigrants; they could be the mothers of my students. I’m old enough now that many people I taught years ago have children and grandchildren. Who knows how they have directly or indirectly touched my life? We can’t always see these connections, but we are enmeshed in them.

As I grieve and fear the results of the election, I think about these connections, how they strengthen and how they fray. I’ve been reading Ross Gay’s book, Inciting Joy, and in one essay he describes working on a project in Indiana to create a community orchard with the motto “free fruit for all.” He says:

Planting that orchard…reminded me, or illuminated for me, a matrix of connection, of care, that exists not only in the here and now, but comes to us from the past and extends forward into the future. A rhizomatic care I so often forget to notice I am every second in the midst of…. Despite every single lie to the contrary, despite every single action born of that lie — we are in the midst of rhizomatic care that extends in every direction, spatially, temporally, spiritually, you name it. It’s certainly not the only thing we’re in the midst of, but it’s the truest thing. By far.

I am grateful for the arrival of this young man in my office to remind me of this matrix of connection. And to remind me that the dream of America is a living dream, and we can continue to dream it.