You Can't Always Be Right, But...

“You can’t always be right, but you can always be kind.”  Yesterday I wasn't right.  Hope is not on the list of the nine “Fruits of the Holy Spirit” mentioned in Scripture.  Blame it on my not having learned it from Sister John Francis in the fourth grade.  

The Fruit of the Day is Kindness. When Kathy and I moved to Warrington Street with our freshly minted little Margie, they called it “Widows’ Row.  There were 60 apartments on the block, upper flats and narrow lots making efficient little places for widows to move into from the bigger houses in the center of the “University District” named for the Jesuit University on the southern of the neighborhood.   Blue-haired ladies would peer out from their upper flat windows at the cute young couple with their little baby, admiring but vigilant too, wondering about these too-young interlopers and their too-noisy friends.

Mrs. Ronan was a stern, mind-her-own business neighbor across the street.  She had owned her house since it was new, in 1928, and raised her kids there after her husband had died.  Her morning ritual involved caring for her tiny, meticulously landscaped front yard, typically miniscule plots of land squeezed in between street, sidewalk, driveway, and front steps.  She never stopped to talk with anyone, limiting herself to muffled greetings to her contemporaries walking by on their way to and from morning masses at Gesu Church around the corner.  

I was proud to have a place of my own, and to participate in this culture of front yard landscaping in the morning before I walked to work at the University.  To brighten up the base of the mature red oak tree in the corner of our little lawn, I split the Hosta that had been in the back yard, planting it between the “toes” of the tree, the roots splayed out providing little spaces that invited splashes of color.  One of the spaces was left empty, though, the Hosta not having quite enough splits to fill all of them, leaving the arrangement looking like a smile with a missing tooth.  For the next few mornings, I was sure to water the transplants, to be sure that they had a chance to take root. 

I was surprised by a voice behind me.  “Hey, bud!”  I turned around, surprised to see Mrs. Ronan gesturing to me.  “C’mere!  Come and take these.  Put ‘em in there.”  She gave me some little shoots from her Hosta, pointing to the toes with the empty, Hosta-less gap.  As I reached out to accept her gift, I thought I saw the slightest smile, perhaps just a loosening of the tight line between her lips.  I carefully planted her gift in the empty space and watered it in, smiling at her, calling my thanks to her.  She just smiled silently back.

Over the next ten years, we developed a relationship of quiet mutual admiration.  There would be other little handfuls of perennial shoots, and the sapling of a rose, a “Chrysler Imperial,” she’d said.  I’d help her with the occasional leaky faucet or blown fuse or clogged gutter.  She’d always try to pay me, and I’d always refuse, saying it was just the return of her kindness.  One time when she was really determined to have me accept something, I told her to give me the first chance to buy the old ’62 Chevy that she had covered up with blankets in her garage.  When a broken hip required her to move into a rehab facility, her daughter came from California and convinced her to come back with her.  I never saw her again.  But before her daughter left, she came over one morning, as I was watering my front yard full of Mrs. Ronan’s transplanted gifts.  “My mother tells me you’d like that old car in the garage.”  For years we drove that old car, well preserved except for a scrape along one side, the scrape that Mrs. Ronan had made trying to maneuver that big car along her narrow driveway past the corner of her house.  It was an Impala 2-Door Hardtop, popular with enthusiasts.  Every once in awhile, stopped at a light, I’d hear “Hey bud!”  I’d turn and see a stranger’s smiling face, and hear “Ya wanna sell that car?”  I’d just smiled silently back.

Kindness is sustained by its own reward.  It fills the emptiness of the receiver, and giver sees the beauty of the replenishment, the healing of the wound, the filling of the gap.  The homeless person called by name stands taller, the child relieved of needless shame makes eye contact, the person feeling trapped in the long line is softened by the friendly invitation to conversation.  They become mirrors, returning to us the light we’ve shared with them, and we have created something from nothing, defying the scientists who follow the law of conservation of matter, saying that there’s only so much to go around. 

The list of Fruits of the Holy Spirit may not include “Hope”, but perhaps it should include Hosta, the Chrysler Imperial Rose, and the ’62 Chevy Impala 2-Door Hardtop.  

Tomorrow – Goodness.

 FreeLemonadeStand by John J. Daniels is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.