A Little Act of Kindness

It was a Saturday evening, David was working late, and I had to buy more formula for Claire. Normally I don't run out of formula or even come close, but we had just taken her off of the expensive Alimentum to put her back on the basic stuff. One bottle later, it looked like it was an allergy issue and not the other problem we fixed. Now I needed to buy more Alimentum and I needed it before the next bottle. I packed all of the kids back in the car when I'd normally be getting them ready for bed and headed off to the store.

Since I was there and Claire was sleeping peacefully in my Ergobaby Organic Baby Carrier (affiliate link), I decided to grab a couple other items to push off my next grocery trip by a day or two. While I normally feel as though I could brag about the behavior of my children at the grocery, this trip was not one of those times. Honestly, they weren't being bad. They were being 1,3,and 5. They were playing with each other and every time I stopped the cart, they'd hightail it out of the little car in front to better play with each other. They'd pile back in for me when I told them to, but I found it highly irritating that I had to repeat myself so many times in one trip. At the end of our time inside the store, we did have a small incident, which had me leaving feeling embarrassed and overly ready for bedtime.

While I was loading the kids into the van, the gentleman next to us, waiting in his car for his wife, commented, "You have your hands full." I get that comment all the time. It's a fairly even split between the people who mean it as a positive thing and people who mean it more like, "Holy cow, are you nuts?" Anytime I'm not sure if they are being positive or not, I make sure to let them know I'm happy about it. So, I replied something to that affect and continued loading the kids into the car. As the conversation continued, this man revealed that he also had 4, but his oldest and youngest were 10 years apart. He was clearly more on the positive side and it was a nice conversation, though I hardly remember any specifics.

The conversation was a nice way to end the stressful shopping trip, but what happened next really made my evening. It was such a simple act, but it is the simple acts that we often need/appreciate the most. As I grabbed the last bag and set it on the floor on the inside of my van, the man's daughter came over and offered to take the cart for me. This left me free to finish buckling the kids and not have to worry about walking across the aisle of the parking lot to put the cart away. Their family still left before I was even buckled into the driver's seat and I'm sure the girl has already forgotten about the nice thing she did. I don't even care if her dad told her to do it. For me, at that time, it and the conversation that preceded it were just what I needed to get through the rest of the evening.

My hands may be full, but so is my heart.

I'm sure in time I'll forget all about the man and his daughter and how nice they were. You may still be wondering why I even bothered to share the story, because it is not extraordinary. I'm sharing this to remind all of us that we may never know how our little everyday actions may effect others, so we should always be kind.

Has someone been kind to you recently?