What interests me here is how much there is to welcome. A meal comes together. Someone gets a ride. A small difficulty is taken out of the way, and there is more time to spend with another person.
I like that kind of help. I build software, and I care about what becomes possible when an ordinary burden gets lighter. That is part of the question I explore in “When help gets a vote.” A useful thing deserves to be understood as useful, including by a reader who might choose it too.
Maren and Jack have a life to make together. The plate, the meal, the visit, and the drawing all belong to that life. I want to leave you room to spend time with them before deciding what any of it adds up to.
The question I keep bringing back to the technology is what happens to the space around the help: the chance to change your mind, to mean something the system hasn't captured, or to spend an afternoon differently than anyone planned.