Today, hot and muggy, I walked the dogs early along a river. We ran into three fishermen and a man skinny-dipping. Aussie bounded over, happy to find another water lover, while Henry barked fiercely, the voice of moral rectitude.

Last night I thought of my housemate, Lori, preparing for her third and final (we hope) surgery on Wednesday. I’ll bring her down in the morning and return the following day to bring her home. She has to heal first, and then, with lots of physical therapy, start walking again.

I thought of how much pain she’s endured for almost 16 months, how hard it is for such a strong and active woman to be laid up, unable to walk, drive, or work. Who thinks twice about getting something from the kitchen because it involves another arduous half-skip, half-hop down the stairs combined with the scooter to the kitchen. I thought of bitterness at life’s surprises, at how a drunk driver had plowed into her, lost his life and destroyed a big part of hers.

This morning I told her not to push things, not to empty the dishwasher (which she usually does), to refrain from putting any weight on the afflicted leg. But when I returned from the canine walk, not only was the dishwasher empty, but she’d erected the Stack with the items usually left on the butcher-block table: a plastic tub with white sugar, a container of ground black pepper, a tower of salt, and a tiny matchbox on top. Each stands sturdily on top of the one in bottom even as the whole thing tilts to the right, while the small matchbox on top, equally sturdy, tilts to the left.

I stood by the back door and admired the whimsy of it. In the middle of all the angst, anxiety, and pain, she’d found an opportunity for play, for something evoking sparkle and smiles.

We can live life with the sternness of the old Puritans who chopped down every single tree here to fight the good fight against Satan, where laughter, color, play, and even nature, God help us, were taboo, while their Native American neighbors loved to howl in laughter and play practical jokes. Looking at the Stack, as Lori called it, I thought of Bernie who couldn’t let a moment go by without making a funny face, widening his eyes suddenly, bristly eyebrows hiked up and head butting forward, as though stunned by what he was seeing.

“Can’t you take anything seriously?” I’d ask him.

“No,” he’d reply.

His kids would exclaim: “Da-aaaad!” Then they would turn to me: “Ignore him, Eve, just ignore him.”

My dear friend, Mr. YooWho, the wonderful clown, showed me how easy it is to discover your innate clowniness; we all have it. Turn a page in a book and see what you can do with it, he urged: the struggle of getting a hold of the top corner of the page, losing the corner, licking your finger to grab the page, losing it again, and the most fun of all—the frustration of it. What a show we can put on just by trying to turn a page.

Or take a teaspoon of vanilla ice cream and bring it to your mouth, but your hand can’t find the target, so the ice cream goes up and down and all over while you look befuddled, scratching your head and managing to get ice cream there. I don’t envy you if all you can do is contemplate your or others’ suffering and travail. People need food, water, shelter, medical care—and humor. Not necessarily in that order.

I broke my fast on Saturday with supper with Jimena and Byron. I brought a check for $625 for 5 driver’s ed courses to help undocumented workers get a driver’s license. Things are bad here, though still not as awful as in big urban areas. ICE agents sit in big cars in supermarket parking lots, where people go for food. They watch the entrances to farms and the farmers, who try to protect their workers, won’t hire as many as they usually do.

I don’t want to demonize ICE agents, there’s too much of that going around. I remember uneasily how my peers back in the Sixties called all police pigs. But while I have no problem with temporarily closing off the border till we work out a long overdue legislative deal, I have serious problems with separating families, wives from husbands, children from parents.

So far, State Police honor folks with drivers’ licenses, but I wonder how long this will continue, what with the billions of dollars immigration enforcement is getting from Trump’s BBB (Big Beautiful Bill). Money buys more resources, agents, and intelligence, and these will have their results.

Jimena told me about two brothers who had taken drivers ed classes with the help of your generosity. Till then, there had been 100% passing rate for those taking the road test for the first time, but on this occasion, one brother passed but not the second, who had to wait the requisite minimum two weeks before trying a second time. But in those two weeks State Police stopped them, waved off the brother with the new license and took the second who didn’t have one. We don’t know what happened to him.

But you know something? On July 4 I drove past a local lake in mid-morning. Children frolicked in the water, teens played volleyball and soccer, radios blasted Latin pop, girls read magazines behind their sunglasses, and barbecue grills smoked next to coolers full of hamburgers, hot dogs, and cold drinks. I stopped the car to let entire families cross the road and noticed a local police car on hand to help with the crowd. Our local police don’t cooperate with ICE, just the State Police.

On that day, people felt safe. They swam, built castles, cooked food, and celebrated our Day of Independence. No one—not State Police, not ICE—was taking that away from them. If they can celebrate their life, what about me?