By: Patricia Murphy
We had the first of our family’s annual showings of It’s a Wonderful Life recently, and as always were moved to embarrassing tears by its poignant lessons about the immense power of a single life. This year, though, I found myself drawn to another of the film’s enduring messages, which felt timely, even urgent, as we look about our town at the close of this tumultuous, disorienting year.
The message was this: small towns like Bedford Falls, or Greenwich, or any of the quaint villages that we are so fortunate to be surrounded by don’t retain their distinctive local character and charm, their friendliness and traditions because of the intervention of a celestial, Clarence-like guardian angel, but because of the purposeful daily choices of ordinary human beings who make it their priority to protect what makes them home. There’s nothing about this commitment that isn’t always Sisyphusian – it is a relentless struggle against the intoxicating allure of all things big and fast and easy – a modern-day Pottersville. But the pandemic has dramatically raised the stakes, especially for the dozens of small businesses that function as the heartbeat of any town.
And that got me thinking. What do we love enough to protect? For me, it might be the gift shop, Splurge, which has been a welcoming, down-to-earth presence in my life since I first hobbled into its newly opened doors 13 years ago, pregnant with my daughter. Since then, its success has felt personal, its struggles threatening, its presence on its little corner of Lewis Street as reliable and reassuring as the morning sun. No doubt most people have their own such places. Maybe for you, it’s McArdles and how they helped you with your very first Christmas tree; or Sophia’s and the great Halloween costume party where you met your true love; or Diane’s Books, where you can get lost for hours and never hurried out; or Sam Bridge and your child’s first visit to a pumpkin patch; or Steven Fox and a cherished family heirloom. It could be anyplace – a restaurant, a hardware store, an ice cream shop – anyplace that has heart and soul and individuality, created by brave people who conceived, built and nurtured a bricks and mortar something that has brought strangers and friends sustenance, usefulness, joy.
Like George Bailey, many of those places are in the fight of their lives right now, and they need the community to rally around them until some sustained semblance of normal life can resume. The community in It’s a Wonderful Life didn’t help George because they felt sorry for him. They helped him because he had been a force for good in their town and in their lives for so long, in his quiet, constant way, and it was their turn. That’s what this moment asks of us, as neighbors, customers and friends, to cast aside our own concerns, our own “saving this money for a divorce if ever I get a husband,” and to direct what little or much we can spare to help save the soul of Greenwich, our own little Bedford Falls.
This holiday season, and as the calendar turns from 2020 to 2021, I hope we’ll each ask ourselves, what do we love enough to protect? And then, wonderfully, go do it.
