The people it takes to redd up after human nature

We were seated around a bunch of tables at the Children’s Museum, slogging through yet another meeting, doing yet more paperwork.

I guess I shouldn’t phrase it like that because it sounds so … resentful.

I’m not resentful. I’m actually quite grateful for the terrific progress that’s unfolding in my community, but like a lot of chronic adult volunteers, I’m really, really tired.

(You are tired, aren’t you? I think I see it in your face … or am I projecting? If I am, let’s pretend I’m not. Let’s pretend your under-eye bags are as unattractive as mine.)

So we were seated around these tables — “so” is to this decade what “like” was to the ’90s — and we were toiling away, when this slip of a girl came out of nowhere, approached the stranger a couple of chairs to my right and threw her arms around him.

And of course he smiled and tilted his head down toward her pigtails.

She moved counterclockwise and stretched her arms up toward the shoulders of the young man to my left. He visibly melted and received her hug with a grin.

And then it was my turn.

I’d seen this adorable child earlier in the evening, flitting from table to table during the brief speeches, and I’d felt a flash of what “Portlandia” just dubbed “early onset grumpiness”: the whole “You kids get off my lawn!” thing.

My husband and I rib each other about our “EOG.” It’s nothing a little caffeine can’t usually cure, but at 7:48 p.m., two hours into a meeting that followed a full workday, no amount of caffeine is going to revive me. A hug can. So I was delighted when the child bestowed her lightlimbed blessing upon me.

I was thinking about it through the weekend, too, as I joined you and thousands of other Pittsburghers in our Earth Day litter-busting, tire-retrieving, garden prep and all-around redd up.

If your knees ache as much as mine continue to, then we definitely need hugs. We deserve hugs.

It’s hard work, saving the world. Or just the city. And as many of us wonderful folks as there are in Pittsburgh — notice I’m not so sore that I can’t pat myself, and you, on the back — we need more.

Saturday’s big effort made but a dent in the mountain of work that needs to be done. And repeated. Regularly. Litter. Rinse. Repeat. The ancients were onto something when they wrote of the post-Garden of Eden curse — that life would be a constant battle against weeds and pests and thorns. (The battle would be easier if I were smart enough to wear gloves. Alas.)

Or of Sisyphus pushing that darn boulder up the hill, only to have it roll back down and force him to start all over.

Modern science turns Eden and Sisyphus into the second law of thermodynamics, which, though it’s about temperatures, seems to mean that the universe tends toward decay. Battling it may be a losing proposition, but it has to be done.

So there’s the decay caused by Mother Nature, and then there’s the decay caused by human nature.

I curse the litter bugs while I pick up after them. With enthusiasm. The cursing, I mean, not the picking up.

Indulge me for a moment while I say that the littering impulse is something I truly cannot comprehend. Who wants to make his surroundings uglier? Who wants to live like pigs?

Thank you — I feel better. But what makes me feel really good — and humbled — are the people who turned out Saturday in my neighborhood.

One young woman who’d just had her wisdom teeth removed was obviously in considerable discomfort and slightly groggy, but there she was, helping lead the inauguration of our community garden.

Another young woman pitched in despite having a cast on her foot. It’s still mending after a car accident a few months ago and multiple corrective surgeries. And she was gardening with her two preschoolers at her side!

I hope your community has people like these. I hope you’re one of them, or could be persuaded — or guilttripped — into joining them.

Today, Pittsburgh volunteers, I salute you.

I’d hug you, but I’m too tired. Go find a sweet, energetic child and stand nearby, looking as pathetic as possible. Shouldn’t be too much of a stretch.