I know isolation when I see it because I have worn it.

So I did what the route had taught me to do, which is not to fix anybody — you can’t, and they hate you for trying — but to simply keep showing up, reliably, with a butterscotch and a kind word and, over time, the small real helps that don’t wound a proud person’s dignity: mentioning that the Bakkes were looking for someone to help with canning, cash under the table; leaving the church pantry’s hours circled in a flyer without a word about it; knowing, and letting her know I knew, without ever making her say it out loud, that she was not as alone as she felt, because the mail lady saw her, every single day, and the mail lady was not going to look away.

There is an art to helping a proud person, and I learned it on the route over thirty-one years, and it is mostly the art of not being seen to help.

The proud poor — and nearly everyone on my road was proud, and most were poor, and the two together make a person who would rather go without than be pitied — cannot accept a hand extended openly, because to take it is to admit they need it, and admitting need is the one thing pride cannot survive.

So you learn to help sideways.

You don’t offer Krista money; you mention, in passing, a neighbor who needs work done and pays cash, and let her think she’s doing them the favor.