Paying it Forward

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Long, long ago, when I was a kid, my family went through a period of time when we didn’t have much.  Although my parents were pretty good about keeping that sort of thing away from us kids, I was old enough to know that Dad being sick and not having a job while Mom was in school was not a good thing.

One evening, just before the holidays, some strangers came to our house.  They brought turkey, food and little gifts for us.  I knew what this meant.  Overwhelmed with a variety of emotions, I tried my best not to cry.

Fast forward a couple of decades.  A friend of mine (“T”) and her kids were recovering from a horrific situation (so bad that it deserves a blog post of its own).  Although they had a roof over their heads, they didn’t have much else.  Another friend of mine, DH and I pooled our money and got a few things for them:  gift cards for a gas station, a clothing store and a grocery store, plus bags of gift-wrapped goodies for the kids.  We had so much fun shopping for the goodies!  There were lots of little things:  kid scissors, crayons, glue, sparkly pencils, glitter, little cars and dolls, you name it.  It took me hours to wrap them all separately, but I was smiling the entire time.

When I met up with T and gave her everything, I told her, “When I was a kid, someone helped us.  Now, it’s our turn to help you.”  Overwhelmed with a variety of emotions, we tried our best not to cry.  It didn’t work too well.