A New Balance

I was fourteen years old when I found out good people do exist. They're not a fairytale like I'd believed. My father wasn't the most polite man on the planet and he certainly didn't believe in kindness. He was brash, unforgiving and made it clear the only person we could ever trust was ourselves. I came from a family that didn't hug or say I love you. We didn't dare rely on each other let alone someone outside of the family.

But at fourteen, I stood outside of my house in early December and watched while it burned. My older sister had driven us both home from school that day to find smoke billowing out of the chimney and windows. I remember using my Nokia phone to call for help and being so in shock that I just stared through the blackened windows. I didn't notice when the fire fighters came.

Our parents were hours away and we had to deal with the fire department, my mom calling every two minutes, and standing out in the cold while the sun started to set.

It was dark before my parents arrived but the fire had been handled by then. That was the day I learned what it felt like to lose everything I owned except the clothes on my back, a backpack of schoolwork and a phone.

The fire department let us inside to look around once the embers died down but it was too dark to see much of anything. It was all ash with the thick scent of smoke lingering.

We stayed the night with a woman we called Nana even though she wasn't related to us. We'd grown up around her, she'd helped us out when my dad started having medical issues a few years prior. In fact, we stayed with her for a few weeks after the house was riddled with ash.

School had turned into an interesting place to be when you live in a small town and everyone knows your business.

We dealt with teachers who called us liars until proof was provided, kids who taunted because we were wearing the same clothes every day and washing them every night, and my belief in the goodness of people had dropped even lower. Clothing vouchers relied on the report from the fire department and it was close to holiday time, so we had to wait.

But I thought everything would have to work out eventually since my parents kept talking about the insurance on the house. We'd get to buy something new or build and that was an exciting glimmer of hope for a few days.

Right before Christmas the tension at Nana's had grown to overwhelming highs that I didn't quite understand as a teenager. My parents kept us out of their finances, they didn't tell us anything we didn't need to know. And they'd never told us a word about the fact they'd let Nana sign for our house or that we paid her and she paid the bank.

As an adult looking back, I know they only did that because they had trusted her but all I can think is how my father had taught us not to trust.

It boiled over just days before Christmas Eve. My parents had paid monthly for insurance on the house and a lady we had thought of as a grandmother had pocketed that money. We had no insurance. No home, no future of a home, and no land. And no grandmotherly figure after such a betrayal.

My parents worked to find a small trailer to rent, with no furniture except a twin mattress on the floor for my sister and I to share. At this point, I had given up on anyone being a good person.

We ate gas station hotdogs and lunch meat sandwiches out of a blue and white Coleman cooler for Christmas dinner. We didn't have a tree, or presents, or furniture. We had no refrigerator or stove, nothing but each other.

No one asks for bad things to happen to them, they just happen. Nobody asks to lose things they've worked hard for. Bad things happen to good people but at fourteen I'd questioned that. I'd wondered if maybe we weren't good people because nobody seemed to be.

My friends and their parents tried their best, a few gift cards, some photos from birthdays to replace ones we lost and we thanked them. We were grateful for those small gestures but it isn't my friends' actions I remember the most. They knew me, cared for me, I knew they wanted to help.

It was the action of a teacher, mostly a stranger, that made me break down sobbing in the bathroom at school one day. He had overheard me mention to my friend that I'd been wearing my mom's shoes the day my house burned. He asked if I had any shoes at all that were mine and I told him no.

I didn't think anything of it. A few days passed and he called me up to the front of the classroom in the middle of a worksheet. I was nervous immediately. I was a good grades, good behavior type student and being called out didn't seem like a positive thing.

My stomach was in knots and my palms were sweating by the time I walked up. He reached under the desk and produced a shiny white plastic bag and inside was a shoe box.

A brand new pair of New Balance shoes in my size. How he knew the right size, I'll never know but I assumed he asked a friend of mine. I waited till class ended, ran to the bathroom to put them on and cried so long I was tardy to my next class.

As an adult, nearly sixteen years later, I still have that pair of shoes. That simple act from someone I didn't really know made all the difference in my life. It taught me that sometimes people are actually nice without requiring anything in return. I don't know if that man remembers me or that act of kindness but it paved the way for who I am today.

I'll never forget that and I tell people the story often. If someone has a need and you're in a place to fill it, you can change someone's outlook on life with the smallest of gestures.