A stranger was kind to me. Eighteen years later it still softens my heart to think about it. Or, well… is kind the right word? Thinking on it, I guess it’s more accurate to say a stranger was not a total dick to me. And that still warms my soul because in that moment I really really needed to see something less than contempt in the eyes of someone, anyone, looking at me.
It was the most difficult time in my life so far. My body was in the process of dying but I didn’t know it yet. My family had turned from me. My babies were all I had. More accurately, I was all they had. Single moms don’t get the luxury of someone to lean against in the storm. Many knew we had nowhere to go but the best way to help me was to let me help myself per one relative and I needed to learn that my kids are the only people I have, said another. The kids’ father couldn’t be bothered. And the man I’d tried to rebuild a post-divorce life with had just taken the contents of our bank account on a little trip to the other side of the country.
So, I was in the front office of a tiny weekly-rate hotel. And he was looking at me with concern. Not judgment. Not disgust. Gently, he just said “kids don’t belong here.”
I had no words, no defense. I stood in front of him, a failure as a mother, nodding.
In the two months we stayed there, he never gave me a harsh look. We only spoke when I paid for the next week and the one day I needed new sheets after a kid was sick on the bed. We kept our room clean and quiet. We got our “loud” out at the park, on walks, anywhere free and outside of that little dark room of survival. During the day, the kids were at school and I was at work. That Easter, the Bunny hid baskets in my car. I kept the room clean myself, anything to be less of a burden on him or anyone else in the world. Being a human with needs had seemingly driven away anyone I’d once thought loved me.
As soon as the tax return hit my bank account, I got the deposit put in on an apartment. That was all I’d needed, enough for a deposit. I turned my key in and we each said “thank you.”
And by renting a room to me at my lowest point without showing any judgement, he forever became one of the people I think of when I think of kindness.
