Random Acts of Kimness

Some say that it's good fences that make good neighbors.

I'll tell ya what makes good neighbors....kind people.

I have such a neighbor who lives across the street. She is a woman of color. She is involved with the community and has her own public station teevee show. She is a woman of deep faith who's faith has only been strengthened by the burdens she's "been allowed to carry".

One of those burdens was the sudden death of her son 15 year old Gabe during a basketball practice. In response, Kim started a foundation is support of parents who have unexpectedly and suddenly lost a child due to a heart condition.

The foundation is called Gabe's Heart Foundation.  The motto is "doing it Gabe's way." Kim gave me a red rubber wrist bracelet commemorating Gabe. I wear it every day. Even now I see it as I type. 

Kim is involved with another program that brings day old bread from local bakeries bread to the needy in our community. When Kim makes her bread deliveries she always includes us not only because we are neighbors but rather, I suspect, because she consdiers us to be elderly.  Cduring one of her deliveries, Kim told Lynn that one night, she had been passing her daughter's bedroom and heard her daughter including Lynn in her prayers...playing for the "nice elderly" lady across the street.

We don't need the free bread but she brings it over with such joy, good humor, soul and love that it's impossible to resist. 

We live 20 minutes from Charlotte which can be a dangerous city. Each day on the news we hear about random acts of violence.

Random acts of kindness which occur in much greater frequency than the sensational acts of violence rarely make the news.

I hadn't seen Kim for awhile when, yesterday, she knocked upon our door with yet another loaf of bread and for Lynn a lovely orchid in celebration of Mother's Day. Then she went as far as apologizing for not bringing bread around over the last couple of weeks because she had been in Atlanta visiting her ailing Father who in fact dies in front of her very eyes and the eyes of his immediate family. He was a preacher. He was 71 years old. Kim "felt very blessed" to be with him in his final moments which were peaceful. 

There are no fences between our house and Kim's house.

We are simultaneously separated and unified only by the street on which we live.

The street is Serenity Street.