The Kindness of Strangers
A teddy bear lost in the fire finds its way back
What do you do when everything is lost? Not just the mementos, the old report cards, the middle school class photos, and the heirloom jewelry but also what cannot be found in a box or a credenza – the space, the place, the shelter, the feeling of being inside of a place that is your home, now reduced to ash, overnight. It is an unfathomable kind of grief.
There’s this from David, a friend of a friend, and a composer, who wrote on Instagram, a caption to a photo of burnt grass and a skeleton of beams:
“This is all that’s left of the greatest home I’ve ever known. In less than two years I wrote an entire album’s worth of music there, birthed and completed a second novel there, hosted many lovely dinner parties, birthday parties and gatherings on the decks looking out at the sailboats and sunsets, Catalina, whales breaching, the sound of waves turning over on our beautiful Will Rogers beach where Tune got to have her morning walk each day…. Chasing the ball into the waves, getting all sandy… but then a nice rinse off back home where she’d curl up on my couch and listen to me compose.
My son took our car home to that house the very first day he passed his driving test. Parked it so perfectly in the garage….Friends from far and wide used the guest room when passing through LA in that house. (Hell, even a dyed-in-the-wool NYer like @dl.menzel made a special trip out to that house). I learned to cook new foods with the donabe my son gave me for Father’s Day in that house. And all that’s left now of not only the house, but my former life… is my memories.”
And my friend Moira, who used to live in Brooklyn and moved to LA a decade ago, who buried her mother recently, and was planning to spend the next few weeks going through her childhood home, collecting things to save for her daughters, what to donate, has nothing left to rummage through. Her mother is gone, and now everything else is too.
And the fires rage on.
But, there is kindness. So much kindness. So many ways to help the families who have lost everything, the firefighters and first responders and relief workers, battling the walls of fire everyday without rest.
But beyond the fundraisers, the big picture donations, there are also so many little acts of kindness – like this – a lost stuffed bear, purchased in a local shop in 2012, incinerated in the fires. A post went up on my local BuyNothing group and the bear was located on eBay, purchased and sent to the little boy.
And last night, in a green cab home from dinner with my kids at the extraordinary Korean hand roll bar Mari Ne, my wallet must have tumbled out of my purse. I was in bed when my phone rang with a number I didn’t recognize and now, with my mom in Assisted Living, I always answer, and when I did it was the voice of a man who had found my wallet, looked me up on Instagram, and found my information.
His name was Amit, and he was in the cab, already in DUMBO, at his destination. I said I could coordinate with him today to pick it up; he said no, the driver remembered me and my kids and he was going to take him to me and then back home, free of charge, to get me my wallet back and he said it was no problem.
When he pulled up in the cab, I thanked him and the driver, and handed the driver another tip, and him a bottle of good champagne. (I apologized if he was doing Dry January.) He thanked me, I thanked him, and now I don’t have to spend the next weeks cancelling credit cards, calling my insurance company, and getting a new Driver’s License, because he was kind enough to pick it up and bring it to me.
This is what keeps us going – the kindness of strangers. The moments when someone gets up from a subway seat for someone with too many bundles or small children or a cane. Searching for a favorite bear, returning a lost wallet to a stranger, collecting donations for those who left for work in the morning and who will return to nothing but rubble and dust.
These gestures of humanity and thoughtfulness create something like a river through the pain and the loss and the anxiety of life, a raft to float on and rest, to feel that essential ingredient of life called hope.
For this weekend, here’s a great way to help.