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Random Acts of Kindness
In times of unrest and fear, it is perhaps the writer’s duty to celebrate, to single out some of the values we cherish, to talk about some of the few warm things we know in a cold world. – Phyllis McGinley, American poet, 1905
As I matured, I had a tendency to befriend those who seemed lonely, maybe because I’d suffered my own periods of loneliness earlier and knew its anxiety.
When I was seven, my family moved from Newark, New Jersey, to rural New Hampshire. The town placed me in a second-grade class at a school near the train depot, even though I’d already completed half the second grade in New Jersey. After a couple of weeks, the teacher there decided to move me to the village schoolhouse into the third grade. I knew no one there and was smaller and younger than those kids. I felt anxious. Then a girl named Pauline passed me a small piece of paper that stated, “Julia and I love you.” I glanced at them with a smile. They smiled back.
When I was sixteen and an assistant counselor at a YMCA camp, I befriended a new kid in my cabin who seemed lonely and isolated. His name was Harold, and he said he was living with his mother this summer in the same town where I lived. He was thrilled when I said I lived near the same lake, too, and that we should hang out after camp. We did, and when I introduced him to my younger sister, Donna, who was his age, he was even happier. His mother was Christine McGuire, one of the famous McGuire Sisters. She sometimes invited me to dinner and let me drive their Cadillac on teenage excursions with Harold. Befriending a lonely kid was an act of kindness, and I received an unexpected adult reciprocation.
During the summer of 1960, at the Annapolis flight indoctrination in Pensacola, Florida, my roommate and I decided to hitchhike to Mobile, Alabama (about 60 miles), on one of our few free days. On a street in Mobile, an elderly man approached us and asked about our uniforms. When we explained who we were and that ours was just a brief adventure, he asked if we had any place to stay that night. When we said no, he wrote down his address and said he would leave his front door open. We were welcome to sleep on his living room sofas. Later that hot night, although the house was dark, the screen door was unlocked. We slept on his sofas and left early the next morning.
At Michigan State University, I learned that my housemate was from Massachusetts but didn't enjoy Christmas at his home because his mother had died when he was young, and his stepmother didn’t like him. I invited him to spend Christmas with my blended family in New Hampshire. He enjoyed the attention of the women in my family. John was blonde and unusually handsome. My sisters fell in love with him.
When I completed my engineering degree at Michigan State and returned to work in Boston, my sister Donna was living in an apartment on Beacon Hill with another single woman and working in the airline's business offices at Logan Airport. When I invited her to ski with me at Gunstock Mountain over the Christmas holidays, I thought she’d gained a little weight while I was away. It wasn’t until two months later that she called to say she needed a ride to the hospital. She was having a baby. I raced to her apartment and drove her to the nearest hospital — Massachusetts General. They said they didn’t deliver babies. Go to Boston City Hospital. Somehow, we made it there in time. About all that I remember at the hospital was a social worker telling me Donna intended to give up the baby for adoption. I said I was worried about my sister. Donna had told me on the way that she’d had a bad experience with a doctor and thus had had no prenatal care. The experience made me feel as though, as a protective brother, I had somehow let her down. Forty years later, a woman called me to say she thought we were related. I said that she was welcome to visit us, but that her mother, Donna, had died of cancer ten years earlier. I felt the only kind thing I could do now was to have her meet the family she had never known.
On a rolling ferry in Europe, a young Norwegian woman, who was a bit tipsy perhaps from the wine she’d had with her bus group at dinner, began a conversation with me. When she became ill, I helped her to the ship’s toilets and steadied her while she was sick. Before she left with her bus group, she gave me her address and phone number and said to call her from my cousin’s apartment in Oslo. She said she would treat me to dinner at her fjord cabin in a nearby small town, where she worked as a reporter for a local newspaper. I did, and my evening at Ingrid’s place was one of my first writings.
When I next drove my VW Beetle to a hostel in Copenhagen, I met Ilan Joffe, an Israeli civil engineer who hoped to find work. Because navigating the city by public transportation was difficult, I drove Ilan to companies where he dropped off his résumé. Ilan looked professional in his dark suit. Before leaving Copenhagen with two American girls who needed a ride to Germany, I drove Ilan to his last interview. Years later, Ilan found me on the Internet from his home in Israel and said that my transporting him to that last company had been his final chance before returning to Israel and had led to his getting a job in Copenhagen for a few years. “You saved my life,” Ilan wrote.
In Germany, I drove to Frankfurt and showed up at the door of my sister Karla’s pen pal, Lotte, and her family. She and her two teenage brothers took turns showing me all the sights. Then I drove to Switzerland to what my guidebook said was a popular ski lodge in the small town of Leysin. There, I met a Qantas Airlines pilot who said I should stay at his apartment when I got to London. Just before New Year's, I left the chalet with two Canadian boys whom I’d offered a ride to Zermatt. They wanted to ski at the Matterhorn.
In Athens, I showed up at Lili Paganelli’s family’s apartment with an American friend (Lili’s cousin in Vienna had given me her address). Lili and her mother invited us in for an afternoon coffee. When John and I showed up the next day at Yani Simineodas's family home (an address from my Israeli friend in Copenhagen), Yani welcomed us and had his mother serve us wine. A couple of nights later, Yani and his friends took John and me to a local café, where the Greek dancing was as wild as I’d dreamed. There I danced my first solo the way I’d seen Zorba do it in the movie, fulfilling a fantasy that the dance would allow me to be uninhibited for a short while.
When I needed to report a break-in to my car, a young couple who acted as interpreters at the police station in Salerno invited us to stay with them. My friend Mathlene and I spent two days as guests of the couple at their rented seaside villa.
After arranging to ship my VW from Marseille to New York, I took the ferry to Southampton in England and hitched a ride with a kindly truck driver to London, where I called the number of the Australian pilot who, at the Swiss chalet five months ago, had invited me to stay with him. No answer. Then I tried the number he’d given me for his girlfriend Meg. She said Nick was out on a flight, but she’d pick me up in Nick’s Mini Cooper. She was in the middle of moving, so I lugged some boxes for her and took a shower at her apartment. Meg cooked me supper and said I should be comfortable sleeping on her sofa. In the morning, Meg asked me to drive Nick’s Mini Cooper to the Mayfair Hotel to pick him up. I stayed at Nick's apartment on Baker Street.
Trying to hitch rides in England, I’d been advised to hold out a little American flag. I felt despondent that my ship to New York wouldn’t leave for a month. After eleven months on the road, I was tired of traveling. But an affable Englishman gave me a ride and treated me to a mug of ale at a local pub. Almost as soon as I reached Wales, a family picked me up, took me to their house for lunch, and then drove me to a spot on the other side of town where I’d have the best chance for another ride. Those who picked me up wanted to know about life in America. After a ferry to Ireland, I was standing beside the road to Galway when a car sped past and then screeched to a halt. I ran up to the car. The driver said, “If I didn’t see the American flag, lad, I’d never stop. I’ve got a terrible hangover.” Then I got picked up by a Swedish family with small kids who wanted to know about the United States. I felt much kindness during my hitch-hiking days.
When I was seventy-five, I needed a surgeon to save my life from a cancerous tumor in my colon. At Massachusetts General Hospital, a smiling little woman with a long skirt and white doctor’s coat entered the examining room and cupped her hands around one of mine. In what sounded like a Slavic accent, she said, “I know you don’t want to do this again, but I would like to see the enemy. I promise I’ll be gentle. Then we can form a plan to defeat the enemy.” After she examined my lower colon with a scope that displayed the enemy on an adjacent screen, I sat slumped on the edge of the examining table. She slid toward me on a rolling stool until her knees were against my legs. She held my hands in hers. “I know you’re scared, but try not to worry. You’re going to be okay. We’re going to defeat the enemy.” Her kindness made me feel as though she saw more in me than a damaged patient. Her empathy was genuine and loving. After my surgery, my wife’s friend Joan sent me a napping blanket similar to the one she’d used years ago during her recovery from breast cancer surgery. Knowing my love for birds, Shelley’s mom sent cards featuring bluebirds and cardinals, noting her love for me and for her friends who had me in their prayers. Later, in her last year of life, I mailed her a large envelope each week — a loving note on a colorful card and one of my family memoirs. She said she looked forward to reading what I sent each week.
When my neighbor Kitty broke a leg on an overseas trip and would be hospitalized for a time, I mowed her lawn. When I was having chest pains (diagnosed as a heart attack later) on a Sunday night, Kitty drove me to the hospital and called Shelley, who was currently away on an extended trip. Even though only one person was allowed to visit me after a stent was placed in one of my arteries at a larger hospital late that night, both my son Jesse and daughter-in-law Ling made the long drive there to support me. Jesse was by my bed with words of encouragement as the anesthesia wore off from my stent procedure and made the long drive from his home in the succeeding days to sit with me in the hospital while I recovered. Two surgeons called Shelley to discuss my condition and progress. When I returned home, I received comforting emails from friends and family. My niece Keri sent me a care package filled with heart-healthy treats and colorful pajamas. How fortunate, I thought, that I was receiving kindness from so many. During my recovery, when Shelley needed to be away for a couple of weeks, my sister Karla flew in from Colorado to spend that time with me.
For years, I’ve done a lot of small things that I hope were kind: Donated metal goods to my neighbor Richard so that he could cash them in at a recycling center, books to the town library, and money to local and international organizations that help those less fortunate. I try to keep my bird feeders filled with seeds and my house filled with love — like doing the laundry, cleaning the kitchen every night, and now taking on more tasks while Shelley recovers from her heart attack and two stent procedures.
But I think she may be tired of hearing me say, “Is there anything else I can do for you?”
© Kurt Schmidt
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| Kurt Schmidt |
Kurt Schmidt is the author of one novel, Annapolis Misfit (Crown Publishers), the chapbook memoir, Birth of a Risk-Taker (Bottlecap Press), and many personal essays. His nonfiction has appeared in The Boston Globe, The Rock Salt Journal, The Mersey Review, The Examined Life Journal, Puerto del Sol, and others. www.kurtgschmidt.co m
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