An Act of Kindness

Annette and one of her beloved dogs

+++

This evening I heard a story about an act of kindness that really hit me. It wasn’t anything sweeping and global, like what Bill and Melinda Gates do with their foundation. It was personal, direct, local, and will probably affect the rest of this particular child’s life. A little background.

Our neighborhood is small, a circle of about 30 homes with a neighborhood park that we sometimes bike to in the evenings with our dog, Noah, to toss some balls and Frisbies. It’s a mixed neighborhood of whites, blacks, Hispanics, mostly families who live here because of the good schools, low crime rate, and the other qualities that draw people to the suburbs. We moved here 15 years ago because the house and location were ideal for what we were looking for and because, unlike so many South Florida neighborhoods, it wasn’t a gated a community and had no home owners’ association.

A decade ago, our neighbors, Annette and Kevin and their two kids, moved into the house next door. Annette is an identical twin whose synchros we have posted before. She’s a Gemini who talks to just about anyone about anything and knows nearly everyone in the neighborhood. And if she doesn’t know you personally, she knows about you. She’s not nosy, but is curious about the human condition. She is also one of the kindest human beings I have ever met.

Over the years, she has befriended a Haitian family in our neighborhood who keep pretty much to themselves. Dad works two jobs, Mom doesn’t speak English and when we interact at all, it’s as, “Hi, Mommy!” Their five daughters have been sequestered.

The oldest daughters are now out on their own – college, jobs in other parts of the state – the 17-year old leaves in the fall, and the ten-year-old is the only child left at home. She isn’t allowed to play with anyone except for Annette’s daughter, Maddie, never has any friends over at her house, and other than Maddie and school, is alone.

Recently, the oldest daughters came home and wanted to go out to dinner together. The mother freaked and told them no, no, she wasn’t going to have any unplanned babies in her home. Annette told her – in English, which the mother understands reasonably well – that her daughters just wanted to spend time together, that they weren’t going to be whoring around and getting pregnant. The mother wasn’t having it. So Annette told her she was taking the youngest daughter out for an ice cream cone and that was that.

During the drive, Annette found out this young girl had never been inside a grocery store or a department store, that she owned maybe six articles of clothing, all hand-me-downs from her sisters or from Maddie, had never had a new pair of shoes or underwear. So she drove to Target.

Annette told her to pick out shorts, shirts, shoes, whatever she wanted. The little girl had never been inside a dressing room and didn’t know what to do. So Annette explained the basics – try on everything.

During this trip, the girl was overcome and started sobbing and threw her arms around Annette, thanking her. She left with three new outfits, shoes that actually fit her, new underclothing, and a new lease on life. At the register, when the girl saw the bill – $175 – she burst into tears again. On their way out of the store, Annette bought slurpies and because the straws were encased in paper, the girl didn’t recognize them as straws. This was how sequestered she had been.

On their way back to our neighborhood, Annette told the girl to make sure that her mother didn’t take these clothes away from her and send them back to Haiti. And she made her promise that if her mother tried to do that, she should come to Annette and she would set Mom straight about this. Geminis aren’t known as warriors, but when their sensibilities about right and wrong are engaged, all bets are off.

And then Annette learned that the family is so strapped for cash they can barely make their mortgage payment and dinners most nights consist of what they grow in their yard – beans, plantains, bananas, mangos. It explained why I so often saw Mommy out in the yard, plucking and harvesting from bushes and trees. It explained why even when the temps here were in the high 90s, they never ran their air conditioning. It explained a lot.

Annette is a suburban Good Samaritan, the woman who not only shares what she has, but goes out of her way to make sure that a child who has never owned a pair of underwear now has that and several outfits and shoes that fit her, that she can call her own. When she let the girl off at home, she started crying again, gushing with gratitude. Annette told her to just remember that as she went through life, she should try to help people in need.

One to one, person to person.

No telling what kind of miraculous repercussions may come from this. One thing is for sure. I was so struck by Annette’s generosity that as the holiday season approaches, Annette and I will go shopping for this little girl. At Thanksgiving, I plan to share with this girl’s family. I will be more aware of sharing the avocados from our tree with them, of dropping by with the mangos we’ve frozen from our bumper crop this summer.

I didn’t know any of the details about this family until Annette and I stood outside in our driveway this evening and she said, “Hey, did I tell you what happened the other day with Mommy and her youngest daughter?”

There’s a special place in the universe for people like Annette. And this story is probably why she is the only Republican female I know. Kindness is something that transcends political and religious differences because it’s, well, so human.