Among middle class retirees, volunteering helps fill the void post-career. At a dinner party recently, I thought the guests had met through a book group, but I learned that at least one member of each of the other four couples volunteers for Meals on Wheels. One of the men volunteers a day a week for the emergency squad. I suppressed the urge to mention my little gig driving Mexican farm workers to health care appointments, but it wasn’t easy. As little skill or responsibility as it takes, we’re attached to these roles.

An Afghan friend shared her experience with American volunteerism. It was during her year as an exchange student at a mid-western high school that she first encountered volunteering. In the midst of our ethno-centric society with each succeeding generation more self-absorbed than the last, she’d found something in it she wants in hers and in her country’s life. She volunteered at the public library that year and has made volunteers from the West a critical piece of a non-governmental institute she heads up now in Kabul.

But isn’t it just part of the evolution of our society from small, tight-knit communities to the mobile, impersonal ones that take their places along the road to modernization? Or have we consciously cultivated this volunteering? Is this because we care so much about our community or is it to develop some caring? All of this I suspect and now we can search the Web by locale to find opportunities to volunteer.

Whether plan, offshoot, or unintended consequence, volunteerism is something for Americans to hang on to, teach the next generation, and export when the opportunity arises.

Every gardener is on intimate terms with the most abundant weeds in her or his garden beds. Here where farm fields surround us, grasses are the most common and also the toughest with their deep roots in the heavy soil of the clay plain along Lake Champlain. Nettles are nastier though as they can leave one’s fingers for hours with an unpleasant tingle. The easiest is pigweed with its soft leaves and stem and shallow roots. It practically jumps out into one’s hands and withers almost immediately.

The summer we had an Afghan houseguest, the rich green of corn and grass in a neighbor’s field provided a strong contrast for a huge patch of yellow, a farmer’s cover crop of mustard. Our houseguest brought my attention to its beauty. We walked up the dirt road and back through the fields to get closer one sunny afternoon. Once we reached the cornfield, her gaze left the bright yellow to fix on the ground between the tall corn plants. She’s a good cook interested in preserving traditional Afghan dishes and was delighted to find a familiar plant, our pigweed, growing there in abundance.

When I explained it was an unwelcome weed there, we returned to the house with armfuls of it. She then washed and chopped to prepare a delicious, fresh steamed vegetable dish for our supper. The first summer I gardened here, I had so much pigweed among the vegetables I was raising for stir-fry, I’d idly wondered if I couldn’t fry it as well. Now I’ve learned it’s not only a favored dish in Afghanistan, but in many cultures around the world.

Seeing the farming area where I live for the first time, she had asked me, “Who waters this?” Her eyes were accustomed to orchards, flowers, and crops only where irrigation is possible and set against a brown, arid backdrop. And my eyes saw Amaranthus retroflexus as a nuisance to pull and discard. The soil, the sun, the summer give us so much. May I cultivate the eyes to see and wonder at its beauty and usefulness.

That perennial topic made The Critics section of the July 2 New Yorker. Elizabeth Kolbert questions the values we convey hovering over our children, removing obstacles for them, while overloading our lives with their stuff. Even I, with my child long out of the nest, have heard the horror stories of today’s parents showing up for college and job interviews. I’m not positive, but I can’t recall my parents, who made sacrifices to assure that all their children could have a college education, asked what happened at my college interview much less considered prepping me for it. And I fought growing up, idolized Peter Pan, and moved back home twice after age 21. Both times my parents wisely made it clear, after a month, that I was not welcome as a resident.

An Afghan friend left her childhood home, parents and three younger siblings and moved to Kabul in search of higher education. She’d acquired the skills of a mother and housekeeper, but yearned for academia. She has had to grow up in many ways being virtually on her own working and studying in preparation for college, but recently faced a new challenge.

She had removed her headscarf at a family wedding. Before her mother could hear of this from others, she called to tell her. Her mother’s angry reaction was more intense than she’d imagined. Remember your mother’s reaction when you told her you were living with him? Days later her teenage sister called to say how upset their mother was and how mom swore never to allow her younger daughter to leave home.

When our actions cause pain and strife for people we love, we have to make hard choices. My friend determined that there are some changes in her that her mother is not prepared to know, at least not now. She called back, expressed her sorrow and regret for her actions, and promised never to do that again. To swallow some youthful passion for the Truth to protect our mother and our sister, without losing our new identity, is a balancing act only the mature can manage.

Afghan female students attend a seminar in Kabul aimed at reforming Afghanistan's educational system. June 2012 Photo by Getty Images

It is one thing to accept and assume the responsibilities of adulthood in an isolated society in the Peruvian Amazon society researched by anthropologist Caroline Izquierdo, quite another in a society with rapidly changing roles. Perhaps no where in the world is that playing out more dramatically than for Afghan women making their way in a few short years from traditional roles to those open to them with a college degree.

The shopkeepers in the college town near where I live are good ambassadors. While shopping for a sewing machine, a student friend from Kabul and I asked a lot of questions about their products. To help her create garments for friends and family in Afghanistan, the machine must be reliable, sturdy, versatile, not too complicated, and light-weight. The search is for one that’s both high performing and indestructible.

The seamstresses-quilters working as sales people explained and re-explained features, demonstrated them, compared and contrasted different models, scared up pamphlets, hauled shipping boxes out to measure them and verify weights, and all this without once being distracted. Then they invited my friend to try out the different features on different materials as they watched.

Later my friend remarked on how much she’d learned from them that day and how generous they were with their skills and their time. In Kabul, she feels this would not happen. Also, it is not an Afghan habit to attribute what one knows to other people. One just knows things. As an example, she told me that she now uses those things you wrap around the open end of a plastic bag to close it.

“Twisters?” I ask.

“That’s the name of them, twisters. ” My Afghan student friend continues. “I showed my sister how to do this and told her I learned this from Jill.” She was smiling about how she’s picked up this good American habit of giving credit. I’m smiling at the idea that this is what she’s learned from me. Just by cooking together at my house, a bit of wire and plastic bring us together without my knowing it.

You can buy 50,000 Twist Ties for $1.46 online. Maybe this is what we should be sending, along with good ambassadors, to that troubled country.

Many conversations with new friends center on family. “Do you have brothers and sisters? Are you married? How many children? Where do they live? “ My conversations with young Afghan women are about these also, and the picture of American family life is often not pretty.

My only son lives on the other coast most of the year. We miss each other, but that is just the way it is today in many families. My Afghan friends must think it very sad that my one child, my son, is so far away. My only brother also lives far away, so visits are rare. Fortunately, my siblings visited our parents’ home when our kids were growing up. Now, however, with our parents gone and the kids grown and spread out, it’s hard to keep family traditions and values alive.

Our divorce rate, our school dropout rates, our college graduates’ debt burdens, the warehousing of our elderly - these family topics also come up when speaking with my Afghan friends. In speaking of marriage traditions, a friend in Kabul spoke of the father’s right to give his approval or not to a prospective husband whom the women of the family have chosen. Men can judge men better than women can, as women can other women, my friend explains. Given such a context, I hesitate to pass judgment.

We can share our customs and beliefs with one another, but we need to keep in mind that Afghans do not want our sympathy, in spite of images of vulnerable-looking, veiled women in our mass media.

They seek our willingness to learn about them and from them. We must share our weaknesses as a society as well as our strengths. If, in addition, we can stand with them against tyranny in all its forms and provide some resources for re-building, we’re all winners.

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Twice within a couple of days on our road trip through Mississippi attempting to pay for coffee, I was told to forget about it, pronounced as one word. This was a new experience for me. The first time was on a warm, breezy afternoon in Jackson at Peppers. We wanted to stick around after lunch to use the free Wi-Fi on the patio, so we ordered two coffees. The African-American waitress brought large red mugs of delicious java and said, “Forget about it” when we offered the cash. A little later she brought us two more mugs!

The second time was when I was in a chain restaurant, Waffle House, outside Jackson in the take-out line. When it was my turn, the African-American waitress filled both travel mugs to the brim, asked me if I needed cream and sugar, and said, “forget about it,” when I tried to hand her a twenty. “Forget about it,” I repeated. One thing to have paid for a nice lunch and be “comp’d” coffees, but at a chain restaurant when it’s all I’m having, I thought. The African-American man at the counter chuckled at my reaction. The waitress repeated it so that I understood not to insist on paying. I thanked her and left.

That phrase stayed in my mind as I visited historic landmarks along our route to New Orleans. One was the mural depicting the famous eleven-year boycott of local businesses by the African-Americans of Port Gibson, Mississippi. The town’s main street retains the commercial scars of that time with empty storefronts and faded signs, but the Supreme Court ruled that the boycott was legal and many of the demands of those activists have been met.

African-Americans walking around today come from a line of ancestors who have survived generations of violence, injustice and agony. This part of our national story is so alive in Mississippi. Natchez, for example, a lovely river town of fine homes and gardens, had slaves bought and sold on most every corner of the downtown at one time.

At morning coffee on a fine spring morning, smile at your neighbor and give a stranger a cup of coffee to start the day right. I’m beginning to understand something about survival and the New South where, at least superficially, there is some harmony and mutual concern across the color lines.

Here at Tishimingo State Park on the Natchez Trace Parkway in Mississippi we had electric and could charge our laptops. Some friends would kid me about how much I care about staying connected, and it’s true, I do.

The next morning I was able to skype my friend in Kabul from the sumptuous Tupelo Visitor Center fully charged. Not that I couldn’t plug in that morning, but charging at a campsite meant I didn’t have to depend on such a source.

The Center featured Elvis Presley on the big screen at his many public appearances. Part of  my Afghan friend’s and my conversation that day was to introduce her to the King of Rock ‘n Roll. This is as much a part of who we are as Mark Twain, someone we read together a couple of weeks ago. Will it forge a lasting bond between our two cultures or create more tension? I’ll keep trying.

I set out from Vermont March 15 in car with husband, dog, bikes, and tent with an itinerary taking us to the Gulf of Mexico and back again over four weeks time. Nothing wrong with where I live except for the sporadic nature of spring north of Albany, New York. However, I longed for a change, the kind that needs forcing with warmth and stronger light. For that, heading south was the answer. Within a day’s drive we had a motel room close to the shores of Erie, PA. From the empty lot next door I heard the first of the spring peepers, a sure sign of the turning of the earth.

The trip meant a last scheduled talk with my friend in Kabul for a while. Hard to know when and where I can get online during the hours she is available. Before I left we discussed a radio interview on NPR’s “The Story” March 13th of an orthodox Jewish woman, Chani Ovadva, who described leaving her faith shortly after completing training to teach in a religious school. She’d had to find a different job, of course, and when she was ready to make the break she went from work to her new life in an apartment without telling them. Her decision to choose what life to lead in spite of the cost reminded me of my friend’s decision to leave her family and their country of refuge to return to Afghanistan alone.

How much my friend has changed since leaving home at about that same age. When under a different roof, how much easier it is to question the beliefs and assumptions of our elders. Religious leaders around the globe forbid adult children from leaving their home with anything less than their parents’ blessing knowing how transformative it can be. The experiences of young Afghans outside the strict parameters of how to be a pious Muslim, as interpreted by today’s leaders, will challenge and eventually change their society.

I shiver a bit in the early morning air of March in Pennsylvania. What subtle changes in myself and  huge changes in Afghanistan are coming?

The world sounds livelier, younger, awake. The snow geese are headed here on their way to Canada’s northern tundra for nesting. Spring is breaking through Vermont’s winter-lite.

It’s happening in Kabul too where the winter was severe. Yes, due to snowfall the power was off from morning till night yesterday where my friend lives, but it is not as cold, not as dark, and warmer weather is expected this week.

An American leaves his barracks after midnight, bursts into several Afghan homes and  kills 16 people in cold blood. It’s hard not to think of this as a sick reaction to the Afghan demand that NATO cease its night raids. In the wake of the Quran burning and the subsequent death of 30 Afghans in the protests, it’s not impossible. The unimaginable happens in war.

We dread the news, my friend and I. We talk of Nowruz (New Day), spring’s official arrival March 21 and the beginning of the new year. Traditions among Afghanistan’s peoples vary, but house-cleaning, making/buying of new clothes for the whole family, preparing or buying special foods, and visiting family and friends are common. More importantly, it is time to for making peace, reconciling with relatives and neighbors, and starting fresh.

All of us recognize the arrival of spring and renew our relationship with the natural world to some degree. In the spirit of this awareness, let’s remember that countries too go through cycles. This is not the first time that Afghan-American relations have been on the rocks, and it will not be the last. That’s doesn’t mean they will always be so. Change is in the air.

A college-age student friend in Kabul and I discussed the protests after word got out of smoldering Qurans at Bagram Air Base north of Kabul. With our different news sources, we couldn’t agree on why this had happened, only that it had. The student was certain NATO forces had intentionally burned them and had intended for Afghans to discover their holy books in the trash. I’d gathered that both the burning and the discovery were more a failure in judgment. The student had heard nothing of the use of Qurans by prisoners to send messages.

We turned to the protests plaguing the country. This friend experiences how they worsen security and speculates this as a motive for the burning.

“This is really stupid!” my friend declared.

“The burning?” I asked to be certain that was her point.

“No, no, Afghan protests. Six have been killed and thirty wounded. Three already dead today. The dead leave their families without a breadwinner, and that is very hard here.”

An Afghan who believed foreign forces had deliberately insulted Afghans, perhaps to set off protests, and yet who was more disturbed by the Afghan response. Why?

“Quran means human,” the student continued. “Quran is in your heart, not in a book. Mohammed taught that books are not Islam; I am Islam. “

What about flag burning? My friend reminded me burning the American flag is part of Iranians’ annual celebration of their Revolution. “This doesn’t affect my country one way or the other,” I suggest. My friend relays a family saying about such activities: “It may destroy the donkey’s saddle, but leaves the donkey untouched.”

We share a smile, and, inside our hearts and minds, we hold our deepest values safe from the masses that react impulsively and violently around us.