A Time to Dance

When you look back at your life, what do you see? She read those lines as regret pierced her heart. If only, she had made better decisions. If only she had thought with her head instead of her heart. If only…

So here she sits, pondering over life’s mistakes and a mountain of late notices. She juggles being a single mother and working multiple jobs. The financial burden won’t go away no matter how hard she tries. It is like the problems are always one step ahead and waiting on her to arrive. She wants to scream but no sound comes out. She silently cries, “Why can’t I be something more?”

As she slumps down into the tattered recliner feeling defeated, those old familiar words float across her mind; “you reap what you sow”. She looks back in time and sees a selfish child. She sees a girl that was jealous and a teenager that felt entitled. She sees a young adult who was too busy to help her aging grandparents. She sees an adult who continued to make foolish decisions and now her children pay the price. She wondered, “Could she turn it around? Could she be something more or was it too late?

She pushes away the problems of today and takes the wrap off a brand new notepad. Here on the unwritten page is her clean slate. She spends the rest of the day reflecting on what she should have been and this would become the catalyst of what she would become.

So she began. She made a conscious effort to do something nice for someone else daily, no matter how small. She soon realized that she didn’t have to have thousands of dollars to donate to a charity or even money at all to make an impact in someone else’s life. All she had to do was care. She didn’t have to look for the need. The need always presented itself.

She went from having good intentions to actually doing something. She volunteered at the local soup kitchen once a week. She visited a retired co-worker at the nursing home which in turn led her to know more adults that enjoyed her company there. She visited her older friends that stayed at home and were lonely. She ran errands for those that were sick and without a car. She did the housekeeping and cleaned her church. She mailed out cards regularly and left others anonymous little surprise gifts. She quickly learned that often all that was needed was for someone to listen. She could listen.

The years clicked by. She continued each day to help others while still working multiple jobs and raising her children. She might not have had much money but what she had was worth so much more. She simply cared. She didn’t need her notepad to guide her like before. It became who she was. She still had the same problems, but she didn’t notice them anymore.

Fast forward to the future and it is a brisk Saturday morning. She is still tired from the double shift the day before. Years have passed since she took out that notepad and tried to reap something better. Her kids are in college now and it is quiet in the house. She fixes her coffee and reflects on the duties of her day. The mountain of bills that once filled her table have been reduced to a few scattered envelopes. She drifts off thinking about the panic that once filled her soul has been replaced with a calmness that she can’t explain. Then there is a sharp knock on her door that startles her back to reality.

She opens the door to find a box has been delivered. The box is tattered and torn. It looks as if its journey was long. The postage isn’t by the standards of today and there is no return address. She brings this package inside and sits it on the table beside her coffee. She easily pulls the box open as the tape is cracked and peeling from years of travel. Amongst the filler of crumpled newspaper, sits a small black notebook. As she lifts this notebook from its resting place, it feels oddly familiar. She has no recollection of this book, but holding it is stirring her every emotion. She puts the notebook on the table, relocates the box to the floor beside her chair and refills her coffee. It is time to see what odd treasure has found its way to her door.

Opening the book, she finds its condition bewildering. This small black notebook looks new by its cover, but the pages inside tell a different story. The first half of its pages are yellowed and worn, as in a very old book. As she flips towards the back, the pages become of better quality and newer. She also notices the entries are all hand written but in different hand writings. Some aren’t quite legible as if a small child wrote them and some look very familiar.

She begins to read and what she finds is unbelievable. Inside this mysterious book, are handwritten entries attributing to all the good that she had carried out in her life. The yellowed and crumbling pages were entries made from those she touched long ago while she was still an infant and young child. She recognized the hand written entries of her grandmother. She saw the dried tear stains of her mother’s love. There were the scribbled entries of childhood friends that she had encouraged and classmates that she had put before her own needs. Pressed among the pages were dried weeds that were picked as flowers that she gave as gifts. As the pages became brighter, her impact continued. As a teenager, her laugh was contagious. She had the ability to make people smile. There were entries from high school friends, co-workers and customers. There were written paragraphs from those that she did not know but she had influenced in some way.

As she turned to the entries that began the day she picked up that notepad, the pages became brighter. These pages were filled with hundreds of heartfelt entries from people she was familiar with to encounters with strangers that she had no recollection of. Her hands trembled as she tried to steady the book and hold back the tears as she read. She could not believe what she was reading or how this was even possible. Maybe she hadn’t been the awful person that she had looked back on. But there was more to be found.

On the last page of the small black notebook, was a message written in bold letters, “PLEASE ACCEPT THE CONTENTS OF THE ENCLOSED ENVELOPE AS YOU WELL KNOW, YOU REAP WHAT YOU SOW.” She exclaimed, “What envelope? Was there something else inside the box?” She hurriedly placed the box back on the table and scrounged through the crumbled newspaper. Then she saw the brown manila envelope hiding on the bottom. She nervously lifted the envelope from the box and opened the seal. There inside was $20,000 dollars in cash. On the outside of the envelope was the inscription, “There is a time to morn and a time to dance.” There alone in her living room and in her crumpled gown, she did indeed dance.

She continued throughout her life to deny self and to be kind to others. Every 5 years or so, another box would find its way to her door and she would continued to dance.