Today I got a text from an old coworker and dear friend. I'll call here Lee. She is a hardworking single mother with a 5-year-old son, who is the light of her life. Last month, her son's father texted her and said he would send her money to buy Christmas gifts for their son. This came as a big shock to her, as he has never even paid child support. With this news, she went to K-Mart and put all of his gifts on layaway. Money has been especially tight for her lately since she has seen an increase in tuition for her son's school and daycare. (The local public school system is atrocious, and her son received a scholarship to a local private school so she enrolled him so that he could receive the best education possible.) Lee and I had even talked on the phone last week and she told me that she was so excited that she was going to be able to give her son a really good Christmas this year, and I was so happy for her. She texted me today with some sad news. Her son's father had texted her this afternoon and informed her that he wasn't going to send money for Christmas because he was having some financial trouble. This meant that she was not going to be able to make her final layaway payment tonight. She told me that she currently has $35 to her name until payday next week and she still needed to buy groceries for dinner tonight and that her gas light in her car had been on for 3 days. Lee was terribly embarrassed but she asked me if she could borrow $20 from me until she got paid. Of course I told her yes and offered to loan her more than $20 so that she didn't have to worry about money in the coming days.
I decided that instead of just giving her some cash that I would just make my way over to the K-Mart and pay off her layaway balance. She only owed $42.81 and I wanted to do something nice for her since she is struggling right now. I walked back to the layaway department and there were 3 women in line in front of me and a man was at the register. I noticed that all 3 women were silently crying. The man turned around and said, "Merry Christmas," and he left. After a moment, my curiosity got the best of me and I asked the women if they were alright. One of the women dried her eyes and told me that they were better than alright. That man had been sitting on the bench in the layaway department, just waiting for someone to come back there to make a payment. When the women got to the register, he asked who their layaway items were for. One of the women told him that they were Christmas presents for her young son. She pulled a worn envelope of cash out of her pocket and he stopped her. Without even asking the cashier the total, he handed over her credit card and told them that he was going to make the final payment for them. The women and the cashier were all shocked. The women immediately began thanking him and crying. He said that they could repay him by having a Merry Christmas. When it came my turn at the register, I asked the cashier if that happened a lot. She told me that it had been happening more often in the wake of the story of the Massachusetts woman that paid off layaway for strangers at Toys R Us. She told me that in fact, I was the third person that day to come pay off layaway for someone else. She told me that like me, most people that did it were making payments for people they knew, but that that man was the first she'd seen that made a payment for a total stranger.
For those of you who think that goodness and kindness are dead, I'd like to tell you firsthand that it is not. My heart is so full and warm for witnessing this.
I called Lee and told her I actually wouldn't be able to meet her tonight to lend her the $20. I heard the sadness in her voice as she said, "It's ok, friend. I still love you and I appreciate you trying." I told her that I couldn't meet her because I'd gone ahead and paid off her layaway, and that when she went to get her items, she would just have to pay the remaining balance of 1 cent. (K-Mart will not hold your layaway items once they are completely paid for, so I left her with the smallest balance allowed.) Lee started crying and thanking me. For the record, I didn't do this so that I could brag. I did it because I love her and I know what it's like to be strapped for money and how humiliating it is to ask someone to borrow money. I'm sharing this story because I was in such awe of that man and the generosity he showed those women who were complete strangers. The Christmas spirit is alive and well, my friends!
Love,
A
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