Random Acts Of Kindness

It feels like I have just been through another grand opportunity.
The simple phrase, "When preparation meets opportunity.....", keeps silently ringing in my ears.
I am not really sure how these things present themselves to me.
I just know that I was truly compelled to do it.
Just as I am compelled to tell you how this went down,
here,
now.

It all really began last weekend, when I gave myself just one yard sale to wander. Tight budget but we have to give ourselves fun, no matter how small the gesture.
I had a ten dollar bill and so that was my limit.
I looked around, as I stepped through the beautiful white wooden gate. The ancient, stone walkway was lined with a collection of kitchen cabinets that were to be installed, but that were now being re-sold.
The bank is taking the house.
She has to be done by today, Monday, at 9:30 a.m., because that is when they are coming to lock the place up.

Beyond the collection I could see piles of dusty treasures that someone just piled there.
Hoping to see people do the searching, for the home owner, the home owner was not getting enough in return for all this effort.
It was a train wreck and I just couldn't look away.
Last weekend I gave her that ten dollars for a beautiful pedestal sink.
It has a spot waiting by the hose out back. If you enjoy out door garden hobbies,
you need a sink out there.
At least, that was the first five.
The second paid for a rain shower head with sturdy hose and spray attachment.
I switched the spray attachment for the one I had before and replaced the three threaded connector that connects it all to the wall and each other. Wanted one similar to this for a very long time.
Wasn't a budget for it.
I promised myself to return to her to be useful. It looked like she was a  little overdue for a random act of kindness.
I stopped by on Thursday, after I had done two clients.
I told her that I was just finishing my day and was passing here on my way home. I was tired and wondered how this tired person was doing. She smiled.
I told her I couldn't stay then but that I was coming Saturday morning, around 9 or 10, to work.
She looked at me almost from a stink eye but I told her I had no other motives than to be useful where needed. She smiled again and we agreed to see each other Saturday.

Fast forward to the day before yesterday.
When I arrived, she looked at me unsure.
I just told her I was there, "Paying It Forward".
I spent the whole day brushing and arranging and erecting, the yard sale , "departments".
Yard sale wandering people watched and roamed as I worked the stuff. The home owner and her family just kept bringing out things from the piles filling every space, every building on this property.
Hoarding.
I just kept selling and getting twenty dollar bills to the home owner. Soon she got a grin and worked better.
It takes so much out of a hoarder just to face each day living like that.
When the time comes to let go, the build up has grown into something bigger.  The days have shaped and re-shaped the home owners' opinion of herself.


This was a Hoarder and I could see the pain of loss in her eyes. So tired she was finally able to part with things, but the original price always had to be discussed.  One way to deal but not really productive.
I just kept reminding her that this is a yard sale. That this information doesn't necessarily apply here.
I told her I was proud of her and that this was almost over. She is close to the deadline and she will be walking away.
She admitted to me that now she could die.
She just turned to me and nonchalantly said,
"Now I can die."
She said that she didn't want her family to have to do this, after.
I could tell it was a comfort to her to have them there to help, now.
It's really a family thing.
I just know where my energy can help sometimes and here I was.


All the forward motion we all were creating in this woman's life and with every step she seemed to find a way to beat herself up over how it ever got this way. Unproductive.
Her brother was sitting on the porch at one point late the first day. He spoke loudly and said, "My sister is a hoarder"! Unnecessary harshness.
I shouted back, "Do I know her?"
Hoarders don't sell and give away and work through the junk.
This woman was being a warrior, not complaining very much, staying busy between moments of panic, and I was proud of her.
The day lead me as I created a place to work and sell. I forgot eating lunch but Dorothy gave me a big bowl of chicken chile. She had doctored up a can of Denison's chile and it was very good.
Just what I needed to work the rest of the afternoon productively.
I made my way home by 5:00.
Tired, grungy, proud of my day.
There is something to be said for, paying it forward.
After all that positive effort, I didn't have it in me to throw in with the, "Beat-up Dorothy Club.
That can be a family thing, too.

Sunday had a different flow.
Dorothy was more grounded, considering, and she had real information about the financial reality of renting a big truck and moving herself and her home to Pennsylvania from Nevada.
By about noon, she told me that the yard sale paid for the truck and enough gas to drive to Texas.
We were doing it and she knew it.
She would be looking stronger, then start getting that panic back. I would find her sitting,
bewildered and fretful.
Grand sons, three and five, kept her distracted with love and imagination for Gramma's toys.
Didn't cause much harm because we were in the home stretch now.
Her son and brother were rushing through, getting the truck loaded before dark.
Her precious things were so processed now that she could only hope she had saved enough to satisfy,
when she got to her new home.
Then she turned to me.
She wanted to know if I would like to return after she left, to scavenge.
I admitted that I had had a dream the night before where a woman had continued to shout at me, "But What Do You Want?!?"
She looked at me and said, "Do you mean like this? What Do You WANT?"!
Oh my goodness, that was the look on the woman's face and the sound of her voice!
We just laughed and I said, "Okay, I will tell you what could be useful to me and what I have no budget for".
You got it, she was wonderfully generous with me and she gave me 12 boxes of stone tile and a tile cutter. Also a small ceiling fan, a free standing mailbox and white baseboard to put in my living room. I think there will be enough tile to do the bathroom and perhaps a back splash behind the stove.
All a gift and treasured, it is so true.
Absolutely hoped for, while I worked, but never assumed to survive all the shoppers. Everything was at such low prices. Tells you something about the financial times when re-model product isn't scooped up at yard sale prices. Also, the tile was all I really looked at but her son had said he was taking it.
The fan is small, with a light and I haven't seen one this small at any price, so I was pleased.
The mail box, I have longed for these past five years. They are metal and ornate and free standing so my mail people don't have to climb my stairs to deliver. Way out of my budget, till now.
Just needs to be re-assembled and painted.
I intend to sink it into a five gallon empty paint bucket of cement. Then when it is set, the bucket comes off and the thing stands by itself, at the bottom of the steps. Think I should paint it black like the railing?
The tile is the real miracle.
Back in 2008, my bathroom floor almost fell through. The wood floor was so old and water damaged, over the decades. That plumbing and structural repair was big money for me to pull off.
The cosmetic parts have waited for funding, till now.
A friend who is coming to help install the tile told me that the cutter is worth so much, people usually have to rent them. She kept repeating that now I, "own", one.
Dorothy wanted me to accept some kind of payment but she actually gifted me in the things I long for.
Made my actions less like Charity for her.
Those generous gifts were Christmas early this year for me. I would have worked for these things if the offer had been made. All in all, this exchange between strangers has been perfect.

I would imagine they are still there now, getting what they can in spite of the locked doors.
Dorothy told me they intended to work all night, last night.
She said she would rather stay till Tuesday but she wasn't sure what the Bank would require of her.
Tough spot to be in, no matter any judgements you may contemplate silently, to yourself.

I have seen this before.
I have no opinion except perhaps the pity that wells up from time to time.
People are at risk of being controlled, simply by design flaws.
When, "things", are controlling us, it can take us apart in such deep places.
Why speak about it, why not do something about it?
I found an opportunity to act and I stepped up.

This post is partly about that concept but though the obvious is here before you,
I do hope to raise the other issue.

I shared with you the plan each gift Dorothy gave to me, has waiting for it.
She may have made those plans, too. The difference is that I will actually install these items.
They will not be stored, they will be used.
Hoarders collect to feel power in the world they perceive to be ,"their", world.
A habit of saying ,"yes", to themselves.
The habit reinvents the hoarders' personal landscape.
It does not create a positive outcome.
The hoarder is compelled to provide more, becoming reclusive with these things, out of shame over the resulting visual effects, of these habits.
I try to remind hoarders that by giving this stuff up to yard sale profits, they are helping so many people have a better quality of life.
They are improving the quality of their own lives by clearing and cleaning,
but also the sharing and the generosity toward yard sale buyers.
Positive energy on a very large scale.
We probably had two hundred people, just on Saturday.

There is one more issue here, to speak of.

Around 2:00 on Sunday, Dorothy told me that she needed $700.00 to drive that big truck,
all the way to Pennsylvania.
We were losing light from the threat of rain and the shoppers were slowing, holding cold hands in pockets. Not a promise of sales, I can tell you.
I started to tell people the truest point of this yard sale, more often.
That the homeowner needed at least $500.00 more, to get the truck to it's destination.
People are so good at heart.
We all know hard times and when the day was closing, Dorothy came to me to say that the last people had put something in her pocket, instructing her not to look till they were gone.
She told me that all day long,
she had been able to fight back tears, but that this kindness had finally made her cry.
The woman had slipped $200.00, in cash, into Dorothy's coat pocket.
The kindness of strangers.......

This experience pulled so many people together, and on so many levels.
All the laughter and appreciation that Saturday sounded like.
All the kindness and generosity from people only walking by for Sunday strolls.
All the united effort made by the family of this woman.
And the effort made by me, a stranger in her life, who knows the kindness of strangers.
I am someone who understands how that kind of generosity has made it possible for me to survive in this world, this country, this town.
Just "Paying It Forward".
Stepping up is worth it.
It is.


Always.