Chicken Soup for the Woman's Soul (20 page)

Anne de Lenclos

In a Hurry

T
he work will wait while you show the child the rainbow, but the rainbow won’t wait while you do the work.

Patricia Clafford

I was in a hurry.

I came rushing through our dining room in my best suit, focused on getting ready for an evening meeting. Gillian, my four-year-old, was dancing about to one of her favorite oldies, “Cool,” from
West Side Story.

I was in a hurry, on the verge of being late. Yet a small voice inside of me said,
Stop.

So I stopped. I looked at her. I reached out, grabbed her hand and spun her around. My seven-year-old, Caitlin, came into our orbit, and I grabbed her, too. The three of us did a wild jitterbug around the dining room and into the living room. We were laughing. We were spinning. Could the neighbors see the lunacy through the windows? It didn’t matter. The song ended with a dramatic flourish and our dance finished with it. I patted them on their bottoms and sent them to take their baths.

They went up the stairs, gasping for breath, their giggles bouncing off the walls. I went back to business. I was bent over, shoving papers into my briefcase, when I overheard my youngest say to her sister, “Caitlin, isn’t Mommy the bestest one?”

I froze. How close I had come to hurrying through life, missing that moment. My mind went to the awards and diplomas that covered the walls of my office. No award, no achievement I have ever earned can match this:
Isn’t Mommy the bestest one?

My child said that at age four. I don’t expect her to say it at age 14. But at age 40, if she bends down over that pine box to say good-bye to the cast-off container of my soul, I want her to say it then.

Isn’t Mommy the bestest one?

It doesn’t fit on my résumé. But I want it on my tombstone.

Gina Barrett Schlesinger

No Small Act of Kindness

I
f I can stop one Heart from breaking,

I shall not live in vain;

If I can ease one Life the Aching,
Or cool one pain,

Or help one fainting Robin

Unto his Nest again,

I shall not live in vain.

Emily Dickinson

The day was Thankful Thursday, our “designated day” of service. It’s a weekly tradition that my two little girls and I began years ago. Thursday has become our day to go out in the world and make a positive contribution. On this particular Thursday, we had no idea exactly what we were going to do, but we knew that something would present itself.

Driving along a busy Houston road, praying for guidance in our quest to fulfill our weekly Act of Kindness, the noon hour appropriately triggered hunger pangs in my two little ones. They wasted no time in letting me know, chanting, “McDonald’s, McDonald’s, McDonald’s” as we drove along. I relented and began searching earnestly for the nearest McDonald’s. Suddenly I realized that almost every intersection I passed through was occupied by a panhandler. And then it hit me! If my two little ones were hungry, then all these panhandlers must be hungry, too. Perfect! Our Act of Kindness had presented itself. We were going to buy lunch for the panhandlers.

After finding a McDonald’s and ordering two Happy Meals for my girls, I ordered an additional 15 lunches and we set out to deliver them. It was exhilarating. We would pull alongside a panhandler, make a contribution, and tell him or her that we hoped things got better. Then we’d say, “Oh, by the way... here’s lunch.” And then we would varoom off to the next intersection.

It was the best way to give. There wasn’t enough time for us to introduce ourselves or explain what we were going to do, nor was there time for them to say anything back to us. The Act of Kindness was anonymous and empowering for each of us, and we loved what we saw in the rear view mirror: a surprised and delighted person holding up his lunch bag and just looking at us as we drove off. It was wonderful!

We had come to the end of our “route” and there was a small woman standing there, asking for change. We handed her our final contribution and lunch bag, and then immediately made a U-turn to head back in the opposite direction for home. Unfortunately, the light caught us again and we were stopped at the same intersection where this little woman stood. I was embarrassed and didn’t know quite how to behave. I didn’t want her to feel obligated to say or do anything.

She made her way to our car, so I put the window down just as she started to speak. “No one has ever done anything like this for me before,” she said with amazement. I replied, “Well, I’m glad that we were the first.” Feeling uneasy, and wanting to move the conversation along, I asked, “So, when do you think you’ll eat your lunch?”

She just looked at me with her huge, tired brown eyes and said, “Oh honey, I’m not going to eat
this
lunch.” I was confused, but before I could say anything, she continued. “You see, I have a little girl of my own at home and she just
loves
McDonald’s, but I can never buy it for her because I just don’t have the money. But you know what . . . tonight
she
is going to have McDonald’s!”

I don’t know if the kids noticed the tears in my eyes. So many times I had questioned whether our Acts of Kindness were too small or insignificant to really effect change. Yet in that moment, I recognized the truth of Mother Teresa’s words: “We cannot do great things—only small things with great love.”

Donna Wick

Copyright ©1987 by David Sipress. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.

The Last Jar of Jelly

Our children grew up on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Even my husband and I sometimes sneak one in late at night with a glass of milk. I believe that the Earl of Sandwich himself would agree with me that the success of this universally loved concoction lies not in the brand of peanut butter used, but rather in the jelly. The right jelly delights the palate, and homemade is the only choice.

I wasn’t the jelly maker in this family. My mother-inlaw was. She didn’t provide a wide range of flavors, either. It was either grape or blackberry. This limited choice was a welcome relief in the days of toddlers, siblings and puppies. When all around me other decisions and choices had to be made, making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches was easy. And since we liked both flavors, we usually picked whatever jar was at the front of the pantry or refrigerator.

The only contribution I made to the jelly making was to save baby food jars, which my mother-in-law would fill with the tasty gel, seal with wax and send back home with us. For the past 22 years of my married life, whenever I wanted to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for myself or my husband or one of the children, all I had to do was reach for one of those little jars of jelly. It was always there. Jelly making was just a way of life for my mother-in-law. She always did it, following the same rituals— from picking the fruit to setting the finished jelly on the homemade shelves in her little pantry off the kitchen.

My father-in-law died several years ago and this past December, my mother-in-law also passed away. Among the things in the house to be divided by her children were the remaining canned goods in the pantry. Each of her children chose from the many jars of tomato juice, green beans and jelly. When my husband brought his jars home, we carefully put them away in our pantry.

The other day I reached in there to retrieve jelly for a quick sandwich, and there it was. Sitting all alone on the far side of the shelf was a small jar of grape jelly. The lid was somewhat rusty in places. Written on it with a black marker was “GR” for grape and the year the jelly had been made.

As I picked up the jar, I suddenly realized something that I had failed to see earlier. I reopened the pantry door to be sure. Yes, this was it, this was the last jar of “Memommie jelly.” We would always have store-bought jelly, but this was the last jar we would ever have from the patient, loving hands of my mother-in-law. Although she had been gone for nearly a year, so much of her had remained with us. We hardly ever opened a jar of jelly at the breakfast table without kidding about those thousands of little jars she had filled. Our children had never known a day without their grandmother’s jelly. It seems like such a small thing, and most days it was something that was taken for granted. But today it seemed a great treasure.

Holding that last jar in my hand, my heart traveled back to meeting my mother-in-law for the first time. I could see her crying on our wedding day, and later, kissing and loving our children as if she didn’t have five other grandchildren. I could see her walking the fields of the farm, patiently waiting while others tended to the cows. I could see her walking in the woods or riding the hay wagon behind the tractor. I saw her face as it looked when we surprised her by meeting her at church. I saw her caring for a sick spouse and surrounded by loving children at the funeral.

I put the jelly back on the shelf. No longer was it just a jar of jelly. It was the end of a family tradition. I guess I believed that as long as it was there, a part of my mother–in-law would always live on.

We have many things that once belonged to my husband’s parents. There are guns, tools, handmade sweaters and throws, and some furniture. We have hundreds of pictures and many more memories. These are the kinds of things that you expect to survive the years and to pass on to your children. But I’m just not ready to give up this last jelly jar, and all the memories its mere presence allows me to hold onto. The jar of jelly won’t keep that long. It will either have to be eaten or thrown out...but not today.

Andy Skid more

A Christmas Story

It was just a few more days until Christmas in San Francisco, and the shopping downtown was starting to get to us. I remember crowds of people waiting impatiently for slow-moving buses and streetcars on those little cement islands in the middle of the street. Most of us were loaded down with packages, and it looked like many of us were beginning to wonder if all those countless friends and relatives actually
deserved
so many gifts in the first place. This was not the Christmas spirit I’d been raised with.

When I finally found myself virtually shoved up the steps of a jammed streetcar, the idea of standing there packed like a sardine the whole way home was almost more than I could take. What I would have given for a seat! I must have been in some kind of exhausted daze because as people gradually got off, it took me a while to notice that there was room to breathe again.

Then I saw something out of the corner of my eye. A small, dark-skinned boy—he couldn’t have been more than five or six—tugged on a woman’s sleeve and asked, “Would you like a seat?” He quietly led her to the closest free seat he could find. Then he set out to find another tired person. As soon as each rare, new seat became available, he would quickly move through the crowd in search of another burdened woman who desperately needed to rest her feet.

When I finally felt the tug on my own sleeve, I was absolutely dazzled by the beauty in this little boy’s eyes. He took my hand, saying, “Come with me,” and I think I’ll remember that smile as long as I live. As I happily placed my heavy load of packages on the floor, the little emissary of love immediately turned to help his next subject.

The people on the streetcar, as usual, had been studiously avoiding each other’s eyes, but now they began to exchange shy glances and smiles. A businessman offered a section of newspaper to the stranger next to him; three people stooped to return a gift that had tumbled to the floor. And now people were speaking to one another. That little boy had tangibly changed something—we all relaxed into a subtle feeling of warmth and actually enjoyed the trip through the final stops along the route.

I didn’t notice when the child got off. I looked up at one point and he was gone. When I reached my stop I practically floated off that streetcar, wishing the driver a happy holiday, noticing the sparkling Christmas lights on my street in a fresh, new way. Or maybe I was seeing them in an old way, with the same open wonder I felt when
I
was five or six. I thought, “So
that’s
what they mean by
And a little child shall lead them....”

Beverly M. Bartlett

Who Won?

I saw a beautiful example of kindness in 1968 during the Special Olympics track and field meet. One participant was Kim Peek, a brain-damaged, severely handicapped boy racing in the 50-yard dash.