Small Kindnesses

Last week my husband and I sat on a bench at the saltwater beach not far from our house. We admired the view of the Puget Sound and one of the large islands offshore and beyond that across the water, the Olympic Mountains. We breathed in the salt air and felt lucky. We went back to our house, contented…………until we discovered my husband’s mobile phone had fallen from his pocket and was someplace between the parking lot and the walk across a bridge to the beach. He used my cell phone to call his several times, hoping against hope someone would hear it and answer it, but to no avail. We hopped in the car and headed back, grateful it was only a mile, although a mile seemed farther just then. When we got there, we made a plan that he would look around and under the cars in the parking lot and I would go back to the bench where we’d been sitting. I came zooming onto the beach and a man got up from that same bench, waving the phone in the air, smiled and said, “I bet you’re looking for this.” He’d seen the phone but hadn’t heard our calls, as the sound was turned off. He had resolved to hang onto it and wait, sensing someone would soon return.  A few days later, someone rang the doorbell at our house, holding out a postcard from a favorite friend of mine. “This looked personal,” the young woman said.”I wanted to be sure you got it.” The address on the card was correct but we recently moved to this area and the mailman had delivered it to the wrong place. It’s not unusual to get someone else’s mail and see it ends up where it belongs, but the woman didn’t live near us at all. In a time when division and mistrust are perceived nearly everywhere, small acts of kindness still abound.

Photo courtesy of Pixabay: hayleyzacha