Somebody’s Miracle

Remember there’s no such thing as a small act of kindness. Every act creates a ripple with no logical end.

~Scott Adam

I pretended not to notice the face in the window next door as I knelt beside the unkempt flowerbed that separated our properties. It was a glorious spring morning, the perfect day to get my garden in shape for summer, and though I liked Mrs. Webber very much, I simply did not have time for her. Still, last night’s dream had unsettled me.

I tried to lose myself in the chirping of the birds and the sunshine on my face as I stuffed dried leaves and stubborn weeds into trash bags, but my joy was eclipsed by a nagging worry. There was no good reason for me to dream about Edna Webber. The dream hadn’t even made sense: a wistful Mrs. Webber rocking a tiny baby. I told myself the dream stemmed from my recent lunch with my friend Claire. We’d brainstormed ideas for our upcoming fundraiser for Rachel’s Heart, a local shelter for teenage mothers. The dream was a jumbled mess. But the sadness I’d seen on Edna Webber’s dream-face was too real to ignore.

With the last weed pulled and the soil turned up for planting, I stood back and surveyed my work with satisfaction. The tulips and daffodils were already poking through the earth. My little patch of loveliness, like my drab neighborhood, was slowly coming back to life. My gaze drifted to the window again, where a slight fluttering of the curtains told me Edna had watched me the entire time. She was lonely, I supposed. Isolated. In the year I had been her neighbor, I’d never once seen her old Buick leave the driveway.

She’d lived in the little house on the corner of Edgewood Avenue for more than fifty years, she once told me. Back in the day, it had been a quiet, close-knit community of German immigrants. In the last twenty years, the loss of industry and the new super-plaza on the highway outside of town had caused the city to die. One by one, businesses were shuttered, houses were abandoned, and the crime rate soared. Recently, there’d been a home invasion two blocks away. At eighty years of age, I was sure she felt fearful. I rarely saw her outside, and the only company she seemed to have was her daily delivery of Meals on Wheels. I stopped in to visit when I could, but I had a busy life. I couldn’t be expected to be her savior, could I? My gaze rested again on the empty window. But what if the dream was a premonition? What if Mrs. Webber were ill or in trouble?

I packed up my garden tools, hauled the trash bags to the curb, and went inside to wash up. I still had a mountain of laundry and a sink full of dishes to deal with. Even so, I put two blueberry muffins on a plate and headed next door.

The sheer happiness on Mrs. Webber’s face made me feel ashamed.

“What a nice surprise. Please come in.”

“I made these yesterday. I thought you might like some,” I said, thrusting the plate of muffins into her hands.

“How lovely. I was just about to have some tea. Will you join me?”

Without waiting for an answer, she hobbled to the kitchen, where I could hear the teakettle whistling. Glancing around her small, tidy living room, I noticed a basket of yarn next to her chair. A half-completed blanket lay on top, looking so soft I could not resist touching it.

“May I?” I asked when Mrs. Webber returned.

“Of course.”

The blanket was as soft as I’d imagined. “It’s beautiful,” I murmured.

“Thank you,” she said, all at once shy. “Would you like to see the others?”

She led me to a hall closet, opening the door to expose a dozen or more baby blankets in mint green, pale lavender, and baby blue, each more beautiful than the last.

“What are all these?” I asked, incredulous.

“My work,” she said with a small shrug.

“Who are they for?”

She smiled a bit sadly. “I don’t know.”

Back in the living room, I examined the half-finished blanket again, stroking its delicate ruffled edge. “You do beautiful work.”

“I won’t be able to finish it.” The sadness returned to her face. “This is my last skein of yarn.”

The statement took me back in time to my Great-Aunt Esther. An avid knitter, Esther was obsessed with yarn and lived in fear of running out. I well remembered Esther’s frantic phone calls when a winter storm was in the forecast, followed by my mother’s quick dashes to the store for milk, bread and yarn. It had seemed funny at the time, but now I began to understand. Aunt Esther’s knitting, like Mrs. Webber’s crocheting, filled many lonely hours. It gave her a purpose, even if she didn’t exactly know what that purpose was. All at once, the jumbled pieces of my dream came together, and I knew why I was there.

Over tea, I told Mrs. Webber about Rachel’s Heart and all the good the organization did for young, scared girls and their babies. “Would you be willing to donate one of your blankets for our raffle?” I asked hopefully.

The smile on her face was radiant. “Dear, I’d be willing to donate them all.”

“Oh, I couldn’t ask you to do that.”

“But you didn’t. I offered.” Taking a sip of her tea, she sat back, a contented smile on her face. “I was meant to make the blankets. I felt it in my heart. I like to call it the still, small voice of God whispering to me. So, I made the blankets and trusted God to show me who they were for. And now he has.”

A chill ran down my spine as all thoughts of dirty dishes and dusty windows slipped away.

“I have to pick up a few things at the grocery store,” I heard myself saying. “It’s in the same plaza as the Yarn Barn. Would you like to ride along?”

“Are you sure it wouldn’t be too much trouble?”

“It would be a pleasure, Mrs. Webber.”

A half-hour later, as Edna Webber’s hands caressed the soft, colorful skeins — her gnarled, arthritic, beautiful hands that would fashion this yarn into something amazing — I was glad I had listened to my dream. The work I had planned for the day did not get done, but the greater work, the work of kindness, was so much more important. As I stood with Mrs. Webber in the checkout line, I felt like I could hear that still, small voice she was always talking about. It whispered that if you have the means to help someone, you should do it. What may be a slight inconvenience to you just might be somebody else’s miracle.

— M. Jean Pike —