URBANNA — Now, in my 80s, after a lifetime of receiving many gifts, I am now at the age of giving as much as possible. I pick up the tab, write the checks and give gifts to others.
It is one beautiful cycle, we receive when we are young from the generosity of others and we return the favors when we are in a better position to do so. That’s the way it works. Giving and receiving. Frankly, at my age I don’t expect anyone to give anything to me.
I was thunderstruck when it happened. We were enjoying a Monday evening dinner at my favorite spot, the Big Oak Café just down Old Virginia Street from Urbanna, which is like an English Pub. The usual Monday night diners were there — Barbara, Jan, the Captain, sometimes Kim and David, Bob and Audrey and friends, the Waltons, George, wife and grandson and others.
Dee Dee and Tiffany were in the kitchen preparing delicious food, our waitress busy with a full house, everything was as usual when suddenly we were told someone had paid for our dinners but she could not divulge the name. What? What? Someone had picked up our check? How could that be?
I had to know who had done such a nice deed. “I can’t tell,” our waitress said so in my usual stubborn way (I’m from Ohio) I announced that I was not budging from my table until I knew whom to thank for paying for my dinner.
Well, I knew I had them because the café was full and people were waiting for our table so finally a young woman with big brown eyes and a sweet face came over to my table, stooped down as if she hoped no one would notice her and admitted she had paid for our dinners.
“But why?” I asked, as I could not imagine why anyone would pay for my dinner.
Because my faith inspires me to do this as much as I can. I took her hand as she further explained that God asked her to reach out to others, even strangers, to anonymously do kind deeds.
She explained part of the challenge is that the giver doesn’t know the recipient and the recipient doesn’t know the giver. But with me refusing to leave the restaurant, she had to relent and break the rules!
I laughed as I held her hand feeling her kindness and goodness seeping from her hand into mine and coursing through my body. I felt warm all over, even on the cold January night. I realized she was as obsessed with her desire to do kind deeds as her faith in God had inspired as I was as a writer with my passion to record our lives in Middlesex County during the times that we live so that future generations will understand better as to our beliefs and values. I knew immediately I had to add this story to my annals.
As I reflected on her good deed to someone she did not know, I realized what the real strength in Christianity is when it is really working in its followers: it inspires generosity, kind deeds, sharing, loving one’s neighbors, even the good Samaritan that stops to help others, all kinds of positive behavior. Such behavior improves the world.
Inspired now and with her permission, I turned to the people at the next table and asked them if I could pay for their dinners. They, too, looked shocked for they didn’t know me and probably thought I was a bit crazy. I explained someone had paid for my dinner and I wanted to reciprocate in some way and keep the generous spirit going. For all I know they did the same to the next table and the passion for giving to others might have moved through the Big Oak Café that evening like fire spreading through hay.
I felt strangely elated all the way home where I texted my son, Wake, and told him of the kind deed and how good it had made me feel. It was almost as if I had a new lease on life after years of seeing most everything on the gamut of negative human behavior.
Wake texted back, “Someone paid for our dinners on our recent trip to Charleston.”
Later my daughter, Liz, came to visit and I shared my story. “Someone paid for my dinner a few weeks ago at Horn Harbor!” she said.
Apparently such acts of kindness are spreading across the nation. I hear people are paying for coffee for the person next in line, paying for the toll for the car behind them or paying for groceries for the person ahead in line, as if a new madness is spreading across the nation.
The really odd part is the feeling of happiness that comes from knowing that a stranger cares about you out there in this big world that comes from a good deed done is even better than the actual gift. And the best of all — we can pass it on.
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