When the Lights Come On in Littleton

It is nearly six in the morning, and I have been awake for about an hour, one of the “good” mornings, which lately just means I managed to sleep until the world started turning gray again. My coffee is almost gone, just a cold swallow at the bottom of the mug. The baseboards hum softly, and I have peeled off my sweater because the heat and the caffeine are finally making their way through my veins.

It has been a heavy week.

My mind has been so crowded with worry that it feels physical, like static in my muscles. Fear, doubt, anger—the usual suspects. I try to keep them at bay with gratitude, naming small things the way you do when your faith in the bigger picture starts to wobble: warm socks, the smell of pine, the first sip of coffee before it cools. Gratitude is supposed to reroute the mind, to tug it back toward light. Sometimes it works. This week, it has not.

Part of it is my body—the slow, unpredictable rhythm of healing. Part of it is my work—the strain of defending my own integrity online in a world where truth feels slippery. There are days when I wonder if I will ever stop being tested on what I thought I had already learned: that telling the truth matters, that standing your ground is worth the tremor in your hands.

But exhaustion has a way of softening certainty. Even the most grounded beliefs can wobble when you are tired.

A few days ago, though, I found myself on the other side of the microphone at North of Normal, talking with Ed King, the general manager of the Littleton Food Co-op. I had been looking forward to the conversation for weeks, though I did not realize how much I needed it until we were halfway through.

Ed arrived early, wearing his co-op hoodie—black with a green logo, like the color of steady things. We talked about life in the grocery world, about his decades in the industry, and about how a store becomes part of the emotional landscape of a town. He told me, “I can train someone to stock shelves, but I cannot train them to be a happy person.”

It was such a simple thing to say, and yet I felt it land. Because happiness—or maybe it is hope—is not something you can manufacture, not in a workplace and not in a life. You hire for it, protect it, and nurture it when the world wears thin.

I thought about that line long after our conversation ended. About how he has built a place across the street that runs on kindness and consistency, a place where the lights are warm and the smiles are real. About how his version of reputation is not about image or polish, but about showing up—every day, for everyone.

That is not the world I work in most days. My days are filled with screens and statements, with the sharp edges of fear that come when words are twisted or taken down. I live in a space where people can vanish behind email addresses and logos, where fear moves faster than truth.

But Ed’s world—and by extension, the world just outside my window—reminded me that not every system runs on fear. Some still run on trust.

He spoke about the Market Match program, how it helps families buy fresh produce at half price. How it began almost a decade ago and changed the way people ate, and how funding cuts are now threatening it. He did not talk about the numbers for long. What mattered to him was the people: the elderly neighbor grateful for a bag of apples, the young parents who could finally afford something green for their table. He had volunteered at food pantries, he said, and once you have looked into the eyes of someone choosing between medicine and groceries, you do not forget.

I listened, and I could feel something in me shift—not dramatically, not like the sun breaking through clouds, but more like a steady pulse under the surface, reminding me of what is still good.

It is strange, the things that hold you together when you are tired. A story. A voice. The reminder that the world is still full of people who care about feeding one another, literally and otherwise.

I keep thinking about the phrase “hiring happy people.” I think it is about more than staff. Maybe it is about the internal company we keep—the thoughts we choose to let in. I have been running a noisy operation in my head lately, letting fear, worry, and resentment clock in for back-to-back shifts. But Ed’s words have me wondering what would happen if I stopped hiring the ones that drain me and started hiring the ones that nourish me.

Patience. Gratitude. Trust. The ones who might not work as fast, but who stay late and mean well.

Because that is really the only way through a week like this—to choose, again and again, to staff your heart with hope.

I do not want to romanticize resilience. It is not pretty. It is not tidy. Sometimes it is just sitting in a quiet room at six in the morning, drinking cold coffee and reminding yourself that stillness counts too. But maybe resilience looks like the co-op across the street—not loud or shiny, but steady. Maybe it looks like lights flicking on while the rest of the town is still half asleep.

I think about how Ed said co-ops keep the money local—how what goes in the register comes back to the people who need it most. There is something holy in that. A cycle of giving that does not just sustain business; it sustains belonging.

And maybe that is the work I need to return to—not the constant guarding of what might be taken from me, but the quiet tending of what cannot be taken: decency, gratitude, the decision to stay open.

The sky is lightening now. Soon the town will start to move—the low hum of tires on wet pavement, the first doors unlocking, the scent of bread baking somewhere close. Across the street, I imagine the co-op waking up: someone checking the produce, another starting the coffee, a few early shoppers with baskets in hand.

And me, here, finishing this last cold sip, feeling—not healed, exactly, but held.

I do not have words of wisdom this week. What I have is a small reminder that the world, for all its noise, still runs on the same quiet truths it always has: that kindness multiplies, that steady light matters, and that hope, once hired, tends to show up even on the hardest mornings.

Maybe that is what keeps the light on. Not certainty. Not strategy. Just people—good, ordinary people—doing the small, unglamorous work of keeping one another fed.

-Amanda