Two Worlds and One Cup of Coffee

It started with a five dollar bill being handed through the passenger car window to a weathered mom from a completely random stranger. The car had been parked in the drop off lane at the front entrance of the children's hospital. Her husband had ran the stroller in the shape of a blue racing car back up to the seventh floor where they had just stayed for the last 7 days. The worry was building in the chest of the his wife while she sat anxiously in the car, every thirty seconds looking over her shoulder to make sure that her son was okay in the back seat. Strangers driving around and walking in and out of the hospital's main entrance. Each one passing caused more and more worry in her chest. The emotions were rising in her chest and as she was just getting ready to switch seats to the drivers side so that she could move out of the way for someone else's emergency, she heard a tapping on the window. She was caught off guard, wrapped up in her winding thoughts that were suffocating her. As she rolled down the window for just a brief moment, the kindest hand slightly reached in and handed the bill to the exhausted passenger. "I don't know why, but I felt compelled to buy you a cup of coffee and tell you that it will be okay" the stranger said in the sweetest voice that sounded more like raindrops in a meditation room than actual words. The passenger was so afriad that she was causing a disturbance by her vehicle being parked in the lane waiting for her husband, that the only thing her tired voice could muster back was, "I'm sorry that I am in your way, I am waiting for my husband to return." The stranger assured her that she was not in the way. As quickly as the tapping appeared, the sweet voice returned back to her own vehicle. No names or stories were ever exchanged.

What that beautiful stranger did not know, was that the exhausted woman parked directly in front of her vehicle was finally leaving the hospital after 7 days. Her son just having had a major reconstructive surgery that had lasted over nine hours a week prior. A surgery that caused for their "normal" to have to adapt and change again, with another new "normal". Feeling as though she felt more at peace in the white washed walls of the hospital than she did outside of the main entry doors in the real world. The fears and worries had been silenced by the beeping monitors and the chatty doctors when they made the morning and evening rounds. Outside of that domain, it was now all on their shoulders to maintain the recovery and help adjust their 5 year old to figuring out this new and scary routine. Life had felt safe inside the hospital and now sitting in the drop off lane, all she could think about was that she wasn't going to be able to handle everything. She was going to slip up and screw it up. She was losing her head in the dizzying thoughts of fear and self-doubt. Then came a tapping and a folded five dollar bill.

It was just a moment. Random acts of kindness can be found in several moments of day to day. For the lady in the car behind, I am sure it was just that- a simple random act of kindness. For the mother sitting in the passenger seat on a spring April day, it was a moment of unsaid encouragement to keep moving forward and a moment to just breathe. Just a quick conversation with no set expectations.

The next seventeen weeks of their lives consisted of manuevering through recovery, an additional emergency surgery, and trying to get a five year old to learn a new way of life was traumatically trying. That family of three made it through by sheer sleep deprivation, several calls to doctors on a daily basis, numerous pharmacy runs, and purchasing an ungodly amount of hot wheel cars to be used as bargaining chips to complete daily goals. They got their son enrolled in kindergarten and exceeding at his new routine. Watching him walk into the school in the fall felt like a true Rocky Balboa moment tinged with the heartache of understanding what the last seventeen weeks had just consisted of.

Seven years later, the mother who thought she wouldn't make it through trying to ease into a changing world, thinks about the woman who handed her that five dollar bill from time to time. Kindness in its most simple form can change a life. I am the woman in the passenger seat gripping the five dollar bill. Every day since that moment, I have thought about how I could impact others the way that I was impacted that day. "You never know what someone is going through," is a phrase that is so incredibly accurate. It doesn't take a lot to change a life. So, I try to live my life knowing that everyone has a story to share and maybe all it takes is a caring smile and a warm cup of coffee to help someone know that they are not alone.

If you are the woman who handed me that five dollar bill, please know that you changed my life that day. I didn't realize it in that moment because I was wrapped up in fear and chaos. Yet, your kindness has impacted my life every day since. You are a light that shines and I hope that you understand how precious you are to this world.