Small gestures and kind words go a long way
We give a Christmas gift card to our regular mailman, and this year decided to give one to our regular UPS delivery guy.
He delivered boxes of my first book in 2015. When I told him what the boxes held, he seemed so genuinely excited that I gave him a copy. He smiled as if I’d handed him a hundred bucks and asked if I was going to be famous writer (I told him “We can always hope” 😄). He passed it on to his daughter, a college student. She wrote a 5 star Goodreads review in which she mentions her father gave her the book. What a surprise that was! So I have a soft spot in my heart for him.
Gift card ready, I watched for him. Three days before Christmas, I saw him pull up, so I ran to the door. He saw the card right away and smiled when he read the envelope: “To Our Favorite “UPS Guy”. He put his hand on his heart, thanked me, and added, “I’m retiring next week.”
I can’t believe how emotional I got. Retiring? What if I’d not given him the card? I wouldn’t have known what happened to him. He’s the nicest guy ever—thin, tall, red-haired, always waves no matter where in town I see him. I don’t even know his his name. My favorite UPS guy. Truly.
How many people touch our lives in countless little ways that we never recognize?
This year, I want to change that. It will be my resolution.
Small Kindnesses
I am reminded of a poem by Danusha Laméris called Small Kindnesses:
I’ve been thinking about the way, when you walk
Copyright 2019 Danusha Laméris. First published in Healing the Divide: Poems of Kindness and Connection from Green Writers Press. Bonfire Opera (University of Pittsburgh Press 2020).
down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs
to let you by. Or how strangers still say “bless you”
when someone sneezes, a leftover
from the Bubonic plague. “Don’t die,” we are saying.
And sometimes, when you spill lemons
from your grocery bag, someone else will help you
pick them up. Mostly, we don’t want to harm each other.
We want to be handed our cup of coffee hot,
and to say thank you to the person handing it. To smile
at them and for them to smile back. For the waitress
to call us honey when she sets down the bowl of clam chowder,
and for the driver in the red pick-up truck to let us pass.
We have so little of each other, now. So far
from tribe and fire. Only these brief moments of exchange.
What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these
fleeting temples we make together when we say, “Here,
have my seat,” “Go ahead — you first,” “I like your hat.”
Kindness, even in the briefest moments, matters. All we have are each other.
Happy New Year to you, dear reader. Thank you for your time and attention today.
