This new tag from Donna is perfect for this entry.
Now I won't go into about how we were poor again because I have mentioned it in other entries. This is another one about the kindness of people.
Every year for Christmas we bought my Mom a new robe. For at least 2 months before the holiday we all started collecting bottles, shoveling walks, running errands all over town to save up the money. We would throw it all in a big jar my brother had hid way in the back of his closet. The neighbors knew about this as we did it every year and were good about not letting anyone else shovel their walks. In those days lots of kids were hitting the streets shoveling for pocket money. They don't do that anymore, at least around here.
The week before Christmas we would all go the clothes store to buy the robe. My brother would be in charge of the money since he was the oldest. This type of clothes store was family owned and we knew the owners as they lived in our neighborhood. They would always tell us, "What luck as the robes are on sale this week"! "You picked a good week to come". We would spend at least 20 minutes finding the prettiest warmest robe in the store. The perfect color, blue, as it was my mothers favorite color and warm. Finally making our choice we would bring it to the desk to have them count the money and see if it was enough. Of course we knew how much we had in the jar, but we didn't know how much it would be with the sale price. Would we have enough? There would be a 2nd choice in case but we all hoped the first choice would be within our price range. The wife would carefully empty the jar and her and her husband would count out the pennies and nickels while we watched holding our breaths. "Yes", the wife would cry out, exactly enough with enough left over for wrapping if you want. And she would do a beautiful job every year wrapping our gift. We always had enough money.
Every year my Mom would get her new robe and be just as surprise as if it was the first robe we ever gave her. We all glowed with pride and pleasure at seeing her look so pretty and happy.
We never questioned the fact that it was weird we always seemed to have enough. We just thought how clever of us to have saved up the right amount. Kids were more naive back them. One of my favorite pictures of my mother is one where she is sitting on her favorite chair watching us open our gifts for Christmas and wearing her new robe.
Of course now I know they were giving us a great deal. My memory isn't great but I think the most we saved was about 8 to 10 dollars which would have bought a robe back then, but not the ones we picked out. We always had good taste. They were just kind folks.
Years later I was in a store behind a child who was trying to buy something as a gift. The salesgirl kept saying, you don't have enough. Not a family owned store. I caught her attention behind the child and held up some bills and let her know I would make up the difference. She looked surprised but let the child pay and wrapped it up and then let me make up the difference when it was my turn. "Why did you do that she asked"? "Paying back a kindness I said". "You should always pass it along".
Gee, there is even a moral to this story....but it is true. Spreading kindness does work. Kindness and smiles. Pass it on.
No comments:
Post a Comment