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The Heroics of Small Angels

To all the people who choose to act with kindness

By Vivian R McInernyPublished 2 years ago Updated 2 years ago 5 min read
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The Heroics of Small Angels
Photo by Isi Parente on Unsplash

Dear Small Angels,

As far as I know, you never ran into a burning building, didn’t raise millions of dollars to feed the poor, or even rescue a cat stranded in a tree. That’s the thing with small angels, their heroics don’t garner a lot of attention at the time. But they can impact lives forever after.

I was a young mother once, holding the chubby hand of one little girl, pushing the stroller of another. The downtown library was one of our favorite hangouts so I imagine we were on our way to check out books. Or maybe I’d taken my daughters to one of the grand old department stores, long since gone, that each spring converted its tenth floor of retail space into a sweet little indoor farm with live baby chicks, lambs, and goats to give city kids a taste of the country.

In any case, I was waiting at the crosswalk for the light to change. I don’t recall feeling particularly stressed. But wrangling two little girls and a stroller loaded with diapers and pacifiers and snacks and blankets — and somewhere, my purse — was a balancing act. An elderly woman, maybe eighty years old, walked up alongside me.

“Those years with small children were the best years of my life,” she said wistfully.

She crossed with us, and then turned. I never saw her again.

She didn’t scold me to be grateful for my children, or give a condescending lesson in mindfulness. Instead, she seemed to share an intimate and authentic memory. There was something about hearing her voice, crackled with age, speak so lovingly of times past that stayed with me. Even today, when I am closer to her age than I ever imagined I’d be, I breathe in her words.

She remains my mentor of sorts.

One time my ten-year-old daughter needed to trail me for a school project on careers. I worked as a reporter for a daily newspaper. My daughter thought my job sounded more interesting than most, but the newsroom seemed like nothing but clacking keyboards and staff meetings and cranky adults trying to meet deadlines.

I wanted to show my daughter how a feature writer like myself didn’t need to react to breaking news of crime, weather, or sports events, but could find stories just about anywhere. We walked a few blocks to the public square where street kids, tourists, and office workers on break regularly gathered. Some people searched for bricks they’d bought with their names imprinted on them as a fundraiser. Some ate lunch from the street carts. Others sat on the steps watching the world go by. Everyone, I said, had a story to tell.

My daughter was skeptical.

We approached two young women, both of them pregnant, sitting on a bench. I introduced myself and said I was considering a story on people at the square.

“How long have you been coming here,” I asked.

“Since my stepdad went to prison,” said one.

“Since my mom’s boyfriend killed her,” said the other.

They went on to describe heart-breaking hard-scrabble lives. Instinctively, I knew they were telling the truth, but when I got back to the newsroom I searched the archives and court records. Sure enough, they checked out. One had been the key witness at age 13 in the prosecution of her mother’s murderer. The other had been found on public transport as a runaway with three younger siblings in tow, all of them taken to foster care because of an abusive stepfather who was later imprisoned.

Through the years, I’ve remained in touch with one of the women. She had alcohol problems. She lived with an abusive man. She lost custody of her children. She got sober. She got her children back. They were temporarily homeless. She was married. She was widowed. She suffers numerous and severe physical health issues which medical experts are learning is, unfortunately, common among survivors of childhood trauma.

I would love to write her happy ending. I would thrill to report that despite everything stacked against her, she has soared. She has not.

Despite everything, she finds the strength to persist and carry on. Not all mentors choose their roles. Some lead by choice and others by necessity. But in my eyes, she is truly heroic.

There was a girl in my high school. I didn’t know her well. One time I went to her house and was surprised at how fancy it looked. Her dad had a glamorous job that paid much more money than the dads on my block earned. Her furniture was chic and modern. Ours was fake colonial ordered from the Sears catalog. She must have noticed the differences too but was not snobby about it.

We recently reconnected through social media. We are on opposite ends of the political spectrum and I've been frustrated a couple times by her posts promoting conspiracy theories. But I’ve also heard her offer kind words of support to people who needed it. I’ve seen her drive needy people to doctors’ appointments. I’ve known her to pick up a bouquet of flowers for someone having a bad day.

One day, she sent me a text message asking if I could help her. She wanted to buy six copies of a children’s book from a store in my town. She asked that I mail one book to her home address, and give the others five copies to a children’s charity. With that, she helped a struggling writer, a nonprofit, and the owner of a small bookstore struggling during the pandemic. She never said a word about it to anyone as far as I know.

Her quiet act of generosity was like a pebble dropped in a still pond. The rings of kindness continued to ripple and spread, affecting the world in a positive way.

Seeing the way she acts has made me want to be a better person.

I appreciate how she leads by example. I admire how another woman finds the strength to try to better her life despite the odds stacked against her. And because of the sweet words of older stranger long ago, I try to remember to embrace all the stages of my life.

These unintentional mentors are everywhere in our lives. And, of course, whether or not we are aware of it, our own words and actions are mentoring others.

Despite the lack of wings and halos, we are one anothers'' angels.

Sincerely,

From one still learning to fly

humanity
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About the Creator

Vivian R McInerny

A former daily newspaper journalist, now an independent writer of essays & fiction published in several lit anthologies. The Whole Hole Story children's book was published by Versify Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2021. More are forthcoming.

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