For me, and many other people, today is the one-year anniversary of when I not only started working from home but also began to actively avoid as many face-to-face interactions as possible. Reflecting on this anniversary this evening, I’ve been thinking about what I’ve needed to get through the year. That, in turn, made me realize that I should thank Juliet Gordon Low, who is pictured on today’s #stampoftheday, a 3-cent stamp issued in 1948.

I don’t remember much about that day a year ago. I have more vivid memories of the previous evening – Thursday night. I left my office with my laptop, keyboard and mouse knowing that after Friday our offices would be closed for at least a few weeks. I walked down Quincy Street towards my car and noticed that Harvard Yard, to my left, was unusually and eerily quiet.

I met Becca, my daughter, at the car and we drove to MIT for the last of a series of swim classes that we had been taking together. Afterwards, we went out for a bite to eat. Becca later told me that she had never seen me so freaked out.

And here we are a year later.

Tonight, Kerem Shalom, my Jewish home in Concord, marked the one-year anniversary with a special online service. Since today, like the past few days, was unusually mild, we decided to resurrect our outdoor fire pit, which hasn’t been used since late December and to have dinner with our neighbors Liz and Elisabeth, who also are active in the temple. While our plan was to head back to our respective houses for services, the night was so mild and the fire was so appealing that we instead brought a laptop outside for the service.

Darby Leigh, our rabbi, had worked with a colleague from California (whose congregation joined us for the service) to develop some rituals for this unusual anniversary. He adapted the Jewish tradition of lighting a yahrzeit candle on the anniversary of a loved one’s death to acknowledge the more than 500,000 people who have died from COVID as well as all the specific people that attendees had lost in the last year not only to COVID but to other causes as well.

He blew a shofar, something usually done at Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, the start of the year in the Jewish calendar. He explained that the traditional High Holy Day shofar calls, which go from long blasts to short sharp ones to one long final call, have sometimes been understood metaphorically as showing how things are sometimes shattered and then put together, not the way the way they used to be but instead as a new, and hopefully better, whole. He emphasized that when this pandemic finally ends, our goal should not be to “go back” to the way things were but instead to move forward in ways that reflect the things we have learned and recognized over the last year.

He brought in Rabbi Nachman of Breslov’s famous saying that “the world is a narrow bridge and the important thing is not to make yourself afraid” (not, as it sometimes is said, that “the important things is not to be afraid.”). All of this made me reflect that over the past year, like many people, I have had to learn some new skills, relearn some old ones, and reinvigorate some others. Put another way, like many people, I’ve had to be resilient in trying circumstances.

That made me wonder about how we learn to be resilient. I think that’s a question motivated Juliette Gordon Low, who on March 12, 1912 held the first meeting of the Girl Guides, the forerunner of the Girl Scouts of America, in Savannah, Georgia. Low herself was resilient. About a decade earlier, she had discovered her husband was having an affair and she was in the process of divorcing him when he died in 1905. A few years later she met Lord Robert Baden-Powell, who began the Boy Scouts movement in England, and his sister Agnes Baden-Powell, who was organizing a parallel group for young women called the Girl Guides. The latter group appealed to Low who had long dreamed of an organization that would get girls out of their houses to experience the outdoors, while learning skills that would make them self-reliant and resourceful. After establishing a Girl Guides patrol near where she was living in Scotland, she brought the idea back to America, and, out of that first meeting. In March, emerged what became the Girl Scouts of America.

I haven’t had a lot to do with the Girl Scouts – my daughters briefly were Brownies – but in an indirect way, I think Girl Scouts changed my life. When Nancy, my older sister, was in junior high school, she headed off to Girl Scout Camp for a month. Once there, she was offered the opportunity to be part of a wilderness camping program. She called to ask my parents’ permission to change her plan. My father, who was usually more lenient, was opposed, because he didn’t think wilderness camping was appropriate for girls. But my usually cautious mother disagreed and overruled my usually dominant father.

I believe that month changed my sister’s life. I think it not only fueled her love of the outdoors but also gave her the confidence she needed to take on other challenges and, when needed, to find her own path. In short it taught her how to be resilient. And in that, she became (and continues to be) a model for me.

Think about this chain of events.

Juliette Gordon Low’s marriage fell apart which led her to England, where she was trying to find something meaningful to do with her life.

She found Girl Guides, which led her to host a meeting on March 12, 1912.

That, in turn, set in motion a chain of events that led to the creation of a Girl Scout camp that offered my sister an opportunity that changed her life

This, in turn, provided a model that helped me gain the skills that I’ve needed to cross the narrow bridge of the last year without making too afraid.

Thank you, Juliette Gordon Low for being my Girl Guide across that bridge.

Be well, stay safe, do not make yourself afraid, fight for justice, and work for peace.