The Kindness of Strangers

I grew up in Richmond, Virginia, where once or maybe twice a winter, it would snow enough to close the schools, to clog the driveways, to change the world a little bit. One year, early in my adolescence, I decided I would see if maybe all this white stuff could maybe change my finances, as well. I slung my father’s snow shovel across my shoulder and tromped off to make my fortune.

I hit up the Chamberlains first—to my teenaged self, they seem plenty old, not likely to enjoy hoisting a shovelful of snow. I didn’t know that Mr. Chamberlain had grown up in New England, and the snow brought forth in him nostalgic vigor, as Mrs. Chamberlain explained. But she told me, pointing out a house across the street, a house I did not know—the Dunnavants…. Mr. Dunnavant had heart trouble, she told me, not only couldn’t shovel snow, but sometimes needed medical assistance right away. Mrs. Chamberlain told me that Mrs. Dunnavant had shared with her a deep concern—how would they get him from the house into an ambulance, if there was deep snow in the drive?

My dreams of fortune faded. Even I, a Capricorn, couldn’t make a profit off of someone’s fear and someone else’s illness. I trudged across the street and started shoveling.

Mrs. Dunnavant heard all the scraping, came out to see what I was up to. I was a little gruff about it, a little bit embarrassed and afraid the tears the lined her eyes might come spilling over. “No big, deal, really,” I must have said a couple time, and then gone back to shoveling. Mrs. Dunnavant went in, came out again with cash that I refused, came out again to thank me when I’d finished.

From that day until I left for college, I cleared the Dunnavant’s driveway any time it snowed. Mrs. Dunnavant would always step out onto the carport, exclaiming at my kindness. Word got back to Mrs. Chamberlain, who called and praised me to my mother.

The task had other benefits for me, as well. I had a lonely adolescence, at least until my friends began to get their driver’s licenses—and even then, our parents were reluctant to release their cars in snow. My siblings had all gone away, to college and beyond; my parents had begun to eagerly look forward to their time alone. Shoveling the neighbor’s driveway got me out into the white stuff, gave me that sting of cold crisp air inside my nostrils, deep into my lungs. I felt strong, competent, and able, when I flung a shovelful onto the pile. More precious than all that, I felt that I was good.

For a few hours a few times a year, I was not too smart, too sensitive, too shy, ungrateful, or even gay. I was just some nice kid—or such a sweet young girl, in the parlance of the Richmond ladies.

Every year at Christmas time, the Kennedy Center hosts a Sing-a-Long Messiah. It is a glorious event, and every year that I’ve attended it starts out with the tenor singing “Comfort ye.” The tenor climbs way up the scales, as only tenors can—but it’s the deep parts of the song that get to me. When all the drums and deep brown instruments and his lone voice vibrate almost below hearing, trembling in my breastbone, like the truths of elephants or whales or the very bones of Earth itself. “Comfort ye, my people”…and this sounds more to me than any bright green pastures, all the still waters, the running over cups.

Comfort. I think there’s just too little of it floating ‘round these days. It’s more than sympathy but less than pitching in. It is the hand that lifts the hand off of the plow, the voice that says you’ve done enough, a casserole left on a doorstep. It’s a currency that strangers can exchange—a recognition that our paths have crossed at this small place, and there’s a chance to make the journeys just a little easier. Mrs. Dunnavant and I never became friends or confidants or mentors. I didn’t go inside the house until a summer day when I was back at home from college, after Mr. Dunnavant had died, when I stopped by to say hello. We stayed little more than strangers to each other, trading comfort in the winter. In those few hours on those few days for those few winters that we shared, I eased her mind of just one of the troubles that I didn’t know and couldn’t count, and—at that age and across the generations, probably couldn’t understand. And she gave me a way to be out in the snow, just some sweet girl from the neighborhood.

This week, how about we keep an eye out for the sweet girls (and boys) hiding all around us? Let’s try to be good kids this week. Keep an eye out for a stranger, see if you can clear a path.

© 2008 Melissa Capers

[The notion of inviting action is borrowed from the

37days blog of Patti Digh—www.37days.typepad.com

Check it out—it is my favorite. Fair warning, though—

her ‘Do It Now Challenge’ just might capture your imagination. ]