Here are the values that I stand for: honesty, equality, kindness, compassion, treating people the way you want to be treated and helping those in need. To me, those are traditional values.
~Ellen DeGeneres
Katrina crammed through the front door of our brick ranch home. Her arms were wrapped around three large foil baking trays and she had grocery bags hanging from her elbows the way pears dangle from tree limbs.
I didn’t really know Katrina. She was an old friend of my wife’s. They hadn’t spoken in years, but she instant-messaged my wife one evening and asked if she could cook dinner for us and our three daughters. She even listed a few menus to choose from.
Her gesture was unexpected.
She explained that after suffering a miscarriage and then losing her job at a local private college due to a funding shortage, she had decided to perform one act of kindness a week to pull herself through a time of darkness and grief.
She insisted the purpose for her offer was actually selfish.
“If I can stay focused on others, I don’t have time to crawl on my couch and cry,” Katrina wrote.
Although it is human nature to feel good when we do something nice for others, I felt there was more to her kindness than that. She could have chosen some other form of distraction, like scheduling a massage three times a week, taking an art class, or another type of solitary and self-serving activity to combat the depression of her circumstances. Nothing is wrong with any of those choices. Instead, she chose to do good deeds for others. In and of itself, her choice was selfless.
She chose our family to receive this act of kindness for the week because she had heard of our struggles to find acceptance in our community as a two-mom family. My family is unique in our corner of Kentucky. Word spread that our daughters were being bullied at school. One was called gay slurs. Another was told that her moms would one day be kicked out of the country for being lesbians. Like our children, my wife and I had also been taunted, ranging from being told that we should go “back into the closet” to that we deserved to die.
Although such harsh words did not weaken our family’s strength and bond, they did make us feel unwanted, unloved, and hopeless. We didn’t know if we would ever be allowed to live peacefully while shuttling our daughters to afterschool activities, enjoying dinners around the table in our warm home, and going about our lives that same way as other American families.
Katrina sought to inject some positivity back into our lives with her perfectly baked and seasoned spaghetti, cheesy garlic bread, side salad, and cheesecake topped with caramel on a cookies-and-cream-crust dessert. She had even thought to supply us with paper plates to minimize the cleanup afterward. As if dinner weren’t enough, Katrina surprised us with gift cards to the movies so we could enjoy a night out together. She refused to stay and eat with us, insisting that we deserved time together as a family.
“I really wanted you all to know that there are people who care,” she wrote of her reason for choosing us. “My faith is deep, and the God I serve says the greatest commandment is to love your neighbors as yourself.”
I, too, was raised to believe that this was God’s greatest wish, and my belief to treat all humankind with love, respect, and equality drives so much of who I am. I do not see people on levels or in categories by status, wealth, health, age, race, religion, or any of society’s other invisible boxes in which we place each other. This belief factored into my decision to slowly pull away from my community because I was finding it harder and harder to continue exuding love and respect living among people who did not return either. The return I received instead was intolerance and, sometimes, far worse.
But the night Katrina made us dinner, I watched as our kids smiled and ate, discussed how great everything tasted, and asked if we could hang out with Katrina and her family soon. After we dined, we sent Katrina a note thanking her again for cooking our family a tasty meal, and for showing us such kindness and love.
“Please don’t quit giving some people the opportunity to get to know you all,” she wrote in response. “You have a beautiful family, and your girls are precious. Please don’t hide in fear. Show the world the love and happiness that you all have as a family!”
Katrina’s words and act of love renewed my spirit and sense of belonging in our community. She taught me that by extending the love and bond of my family, we can help heal not only our own broken hearts, but also the cracks in the hearts of others.
~Mary Anglin-Coulter
