September is my favorite month. The weather cools and the water is still warm. For Cape Codders, September is the month we get our sandbar back.

September is also the month school begins. This week my high school hosted new students for an orientation day. We wanted to make sure they all felt comfortable starting school – especially after a year when so many had been remote.

A group of upperclass students planned the event. They worked on every detail down to the minute. They grouped students by ice cream flavors, created maps of the school, and copied class schedules for each student. They spent hours designing for a welcoming first encounter. The plan was perfect.

Then nature happened. The morning of the event we were hit by a flash flood and everything had to be reworked for a one and a half hour delay. Messages went out, bus routes were updated, everything was reshuffled.

As the buses pulled away from school at the end of the reworked orientation, I sat down on one of the wooden benches, thought about the planning, and asked myself: Why had it gone so well?

I remembered the smiles on the faces of the kids talking with each other in the courtyard and the sound of their laughter at lunch. I heard the voices of the older students running the guided tours: answering questions, pointing out where things are, explaining how things like lunch work, and describing how the buildings each have a different blue letter on them.

Then I understood. The new students had come because they were nervous. The schedules, the maps, and the guided tour were not why they had come. What they really needed, and what they took home with them, was something much more powerful: the feeling that everyone had cared.

The plan had worked because the kids had been nice to each other. Space for kindness – that was the answer to my question.

Peace,
Chris