3 Unique Kindnesses
*Author’s Note: Kindness happens to us every day. Whether it’s a woman holding the door for us as we enter the market, or the guy who hands us a dropped baby toy. Humans do small kindnesses for each other all the time. And while we could all stand to take a moment and appreciate those tiny beautiful things, this series is not about the ordinary of the everyday. In this and the following two posts, I’m sharing kindnesses that were grand, unique and had a lasting, profound effect on me. The world is sometimes a too solid, jagged and hard place. Receiving kindness acts as a protective bubble wrap, allowing us to continue to walk, stagger and sway through life.
When I was nine years old, my mom took my younger sister and I on a clandestine nighttime escape from her abusive husband, my dad. We ended up taking several buses from Upstate New York, and traveling for days with almost no clothes or supplies and very little money. We landed in rural South Carolina, somewhere outside of Conway, at a farm some family friends owned.
A couple of weeks later, my dad showed up, and my mom took him back. Again. We ended up moving into a furnished single-wide trailer. My dad had brought with him a few of our belongings, but most of the “things” of our lives were left in New York.
It was shortly before Christmas when we moved into the trailer. I remember that to the left of us was a BP76 gas station, whose owner had chickens. The chickens were rovers and considered our yard, their yard. Maybe it was theirs and we were the interlopers. Those chickens, and one ornery rooster in particular, became the bane of my sister’s existence, though that relationship is a story for a different time. To the right and behind the trailer were nothing but woods.
The people who lived in the trailer across the road from us tried to befriend my parents with invitations to their church. My parents were not church people. My father had never gone, and my mother had been raised with enough religion, she said, to last her three lifetimes. They were firmly against going to church and didn’t want us kids to go either.
The day before Christmas Eve, the neighbors knocked on our door again with an invitation to their church’s Christmas Eve party. They said Santa would be there and wouldn’t your girls like to go? My parents politely and firmly said no, we wouldn’t be going.
Of course, my sister and I really wanted to go. We wanted out. We wanted fun. Things hadn’t been very joyful in the trailer. The upcoming holiday and the fact that our parents were penniless, jobless, and newly reunited, added to the stress and tension in the house.
I don’t know what exactly made them change their minds. Maybe it was our united begging alternating with bouts of moping, but Christmas Eve came and my dad drove my sister and I to our neighbor’s small church.
We arrived as the party was in full swing. I remember my sister and I standing near the doors of the brightly decorated, buzzing community room, not knowing what to do with ourselves. We stood there, not knowing anyone and feeling painfully self-conscious. On one side of the room there was a lovely big pine tree, with strands of tinsel and colorful blinking lights. Under the tree there was a mountain of wrapped gifts. Children were running around laughing, opening presents and eating cookies from the heaping platters on the refreshment tables. There was a man in a terrible cotton beard, dressed as Santa and “ho, ho, ho-ing” his way around the room. Parents were standing in groups, talking and laughing, or trying to wrangle excited children. It was joyful.
After a moment of standing there, our neighbor spied us and came over. She wished us a Merry Christmas and encouraged my sister and I to go look under the tree. We had no idea why, but she insisted, so we did.
We walked slowly to the tree and bent down and begin looking at the gifts. We both looked at each other, and around to see if someone would stop us, or yell at us for touching the presents. No one did.
After a couple of minutes of carefully and gingerly moving gifts around, my sister and I found gifts with our names on them. How could that be?! We didn’t know anyone. No one knew us. We didn’t have any friends. No family other than our parents. How could there be gifts with our actual names under this tree, in a church we didn’t attend, in a place we had just moved to? The two of us stood there, looking at each other, our mouths open in surprise.
When we looked around, we saw our neighbor smiling at us and encouraging us to open our gifts. We began to slowly tear the paper off the little boxes, still looking around to make sure that what we were doing was okay.
Honestly, I don’t remember what my sister got. I think it was a necklace, but I will never forget what I received. Inside a little rectangular box, nestled on a bed of white cotton was a golden bracelet. On the bracelet were two little charms. One was a plastic heart, with a tiny yellow seed in it. The other was a little plaque with the inscription, “If you have faith the size of a mustard seed, nothing shall be impossible for you.” It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.
It still amazes me. That feeling, when I looked down at all those gifts under that tree, and saw one with my name on it. It felt unbelievable, like magic or a miracle of sorts. What it was, was kindness. Now, all these years later, I haven’t forgotten the profound and generous kindness that our neighbor and her community showed to two poor, scrappy little girls.
Yes, I still have that bracelet, packed away in a keepsake box.
While I don’t look at it every day, I haven’t ever forgotten the message it gave me – it’s helped to shape my life.
Nothing is impossible, and kindness can ripple through years.
LB Adams is the CEO of Practical Dramatics, LLC. She is a communication & public speaking coach, author and keynote speaker.