All Year Long

            During the Christmas season, many focus their actions on helping those around them.  There is an abundance of giving, thoughtfulness and kind acts, however, by the time January comes, many of those good intentions have turned to hectic schedules, paying for seasonal overspending, and going through each day without a holidays on the horizon. 

            But there are individuals who continue to give to others and share their talents all year long, no matter what season it is.  A few years ago, one of our sons was in the hospital for a series of operations over a year’s time.  These surgeries were accompanied with a great deal of worry and strain to our entire family.  At times I was the only one sitting in the hospital at his bedside for days at a time as my husband was working full time to keep up with the doctor bills.  While I was in the hospital, I spent the hours helping my son get about again and I always brought handwork to do and books to read.  But despite all of my preparations, there was still so much time that seemed to stretch out forever.

            During one of these eternally long intervals of time, and during a dreary time of the year, one of those “giving” individuals came to the hospital wing we were staying in.  He brought two items with him, a stool and a guitar, which he quickly set up in the hallway close by our hospital door.  Soon he began playing soothing, peaceful melodies; none that I recognized but that let my mind float easily between unruffled thoughts.  The songs had no words and at times he would softly hum along.  He played for about 45 minutes, then packed up and left with a smile on his face.  I know he had other things he could have been doing, but he chose to spend a bit of his day to help people he was not even acquainted with.

            I do not know what occurred in this man’s past that compelled him to spend his time singing to a silent crowd.  Maybe he had spent time beside a hospital bed in the past and wanted to return to favor to someone who had stilled his anxious mind. Maybe he simply loved music and wanted to share it anywhere he could.   It really doesn’t matter which event caused this musician’s compassionate acts that day in the hospital, however, it makes me take a moment to think about what experiences of my past will effect the activities I participate in today.

The Kindness of Strangers

           I recently read a book by Timothy Brook, Vermeer’s Hat: The Seventeenth Century and the Dawn of the Global World.  I was immediately intrigued by his reason for writing this book from the viewpoint he did.  He described when he was twenty years old, cycling across the Low Countries beginning in Amsterdam.  On the second day of this ambitious journey, the evening sky began to darken and rain started to fall heavily making the road quite slick.  As he peddled along the drenched street, a truck got too close to him and he was forced off the road and into the grass.  Although he was not hurt, he was covered in mud and his bike was bent, needing some repair.  Since there were no bridges nearby to hide under, he went to the nearest home to ask if he could simply get a few minutes out of the rain.  The old woman who answered the door had seen his mishap, she hesitated for a moment then opened the door and invited Brook into her home. He recalled, “All I wanted was to stand for a few minutes out of the rain and pull myself together, but she wouldn’t hear of it.  She poured me a hot bath, cooked me dinner, gave me a bed to sleep in and pressed on me several of her dead husband’s things, including a waterproof coat” (Brook, 1).  The next morning she fed him the “best breakfast [he had] ever eaten” and gave him some postcards of local sites, urging him to stop in town and look around before biking to his next scheduled location.  Brook followed her advice to take the scenic route into the Dutch town of Delft; this detour ended up being the main “jumping-off-point” of his entire book.  Because of the kindness of this one woman, Brook was introduced to a world he did not know existed; that one simple act of kindness made all the difference for him.

            Just as Brook experienced unexpected kindness, recently I was the happy recipient of the kindness of a stranger.  My oldest son is across the country right now serving the people of Minnesota and it was his birthday last week.  Of course there was no way I would be able to cook him his favorite food on that day as I had all the years he was growing up.  However, near his birthday, I received a call from an area code I did not recognize and soon found it was a stranger offering her kindness to my son.  She discovered it was his birthday and wanted to cook him a birthday meal of his favorite food to show her appreciation for all of the help he had given her and her husband during the past few months.  I was touched by her desired to do something so kind for my son and in a roundabout way, for me.

            Although these seeming simply experiences are not earth shattering or influential to thousands of people, they become part of our own personal histories and are the stories that are told again and again to those closest to us.

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Brook, Timothy. Vermeer’s Hat: The Seventeenth Century and the Dawn of the Global World.