I did a good thing today.
Annette gave me a handful of cards not too long ago for the MISS Foundation's Kindness Project. The concept of this is to do anonymous random acts of kindness, in honor of and in memory of a loved one who has passed away. It just seemed like such a beautiful tribute to Ava, and such an awe-inspiring way to keep her memory alive...to be able to do kind gestures to strangers, to put a smile on someone else's face and know that we're doing it for Ava...it's hard to find the words to explain it. It just feels right.
Here's what the cards look like:
I had given Annette a ton of teddy bears for her Ava's Angel Bears project, and while most of the bears were good-sized, there were several mini ones that weren't really appropriate for donating to hospitals. So Annette decided to use these, along with the Kindness Cards. She tied the cards around the little bears w/ a ribbon, and left it on a car in a parking lot that had a baby seat in it. Just last week, Colby's mom asked if Annette could use beanie babies for Ava's Angel Bears. They're too small for donating to the hospital, but Annette said she'd take them to use for the Kindness Cards. This time, I kept a few, and tied cards to them in memory of "Ava Carmella ~ my niece," using the cards Annette had given me.
I gave away my first one today. I tied a card to a little black beanie baby cat, using a sage green ribbon (one of Ava's nursery colors). Then off I went to Wal-Mart to pick up a list of things. I saw a woman in the shoe department with an infant in a carrier attached to her shopping cart, and was intending to just drop it in her cart, but couldn't get close enough to do it before she moved away. And I just didn't have to guts to come out and just hand it away. Afraid I could cry if I had to explain it. I saw the same woman & baby again in the crafts section, still couldn't pass off the cat. Saw her again in curtains...still no luck.
I'd seen other people w/ children to potentially give the cat & card to, but I just couldn't pull it off. So was considering just tucking it back into my purse & trying it another day, when I turned into another aisle, and there's that same woman & infant...and she's distracted, an employee is helping get something off a high shelf. So I mosey on past her cart and drop the cat inside. Mission accomplished -- I felt so good!
Well, you'd think in store that big I'd leave and never know how it all works out in the end. Doesn't that same woman pull her carriage up to the next check out line over from me. And begins to talk to the cashier about what she just found in her cart. Her voice was very emotional and excited -- I couldn't see her face, but could overhear bits of her conversation (I wished the woman ringing me up would have just stop talking so I could have heard more!), and saying things like "Whoever did this could never imagine just how much this meant to me...I had several miscarriages myself...I've been praying for an unborn baby since March...what a wonderful thing..."
I got out to my truck and cried. It's like I was supposed to do this little act of kindness for this particular woman on this particular day. What an amazing, unbelievable feeling, to do something that was really so small, and to make such a difference in someone's day.
This one's for you, Ava.