10 Family Moments That Prove the Quietest Kindness Leaves the Loudest Mark

I’m a single mom to a 9-year-old. Money’s always tight. For school, my son used his cousin’s old backpack. I patched it and embroidered his favorite animals on it. At pickup, a parent saw him and smirked, “They sell new ones, you know?” I went red when my son replied: “My mom made it just for me. Nobody else has one like this.” He said it so proudly, like it was the coolest thing in the world, pure happiness written all over his face. Later that night I asked if he really liked it, patches and all. He said yeah, because it wasn’t just a backpack, it was his cousin’s first, and it had already been on like a hundred road trips with the family. “Plus now it has your stitching on it, so it’s basically one of a kind.” That kind of empathy from a 9-year-old floors me. I didn’t expect this much wisdom, or this many tears, over a backpack, but here we are, and it’s moments like this that make single parenting feel worth every patch and stitch. Some days parenting alone feels like just getting through the week, but moments like this are proof it’s working better than I give myself credit for.

Tonight when I was cooking dinner, instant mashed potatoes popped and burnt my hand really bad. I have never had pain like this even though I have burnt myself on fry cooking oil. Every time I would say that my hand hurt my 3-year-old son has came up to me and kissed it so many times tonight. Motherhood can be really frustrating at times, it definitely looked a lot easier as an aunt and my husband and I have no village, but man all his little kisses on my super bad hurting finger is just the kindest act. Let’s all brag on our little ones empathy and kindness please.

The swim instructor pulled me aside the first week and warned me gently that my daughter, who has never once liked getting her face wet, probably wasn’t going to make it through the summer program, and I nearly pulled her out right then to save us both the embarrassment. She showed up anyway every morning in her ridiculous shark goggles, and by August she wasn’t just swimming, she was the one crouched at the edge of the pool coaching the next round of scared five year olds through their own first splash, telling them exactly what she wished someone had told her, which is that being scared and being brave can happen in the same afternoon. That kind of kindness, passed from one scared five year old to the next, is the whole reason summer swim programs like that exist.

When I was a kid, I went to a very expensive private school. Most of the families were very wealthy, but some were barely scraping by to afford the tuition, and some were on scholarships in families that could barely afford rent. My family was one of the fairly well off ones. The school also had field trips, some were just $5-10, but some were $50-100 per kid. None covered by scholarships. An old teacher of mine heard my mom passed 4 years ago. She called me today- she’d just found my number through other people. She told me about how my mom would show up to the office on field trip days for mine and my sisters classes, she’d ask for the teacher, and then she’d ask how many kids were staying behind because they couldn’t pay. Then she’d cover their fees. She’d also have the teachers call her if a parent couldn’t afford school supplies or a required book, and she’d buy it and have the teacher give it to them privately. If a birthday was coming up and the parents hadn’t said they were sending cake(school required 2 or more days notice), she had them teacher email her the night before. We lived in a building that had a grocery store with a good bakery. So she’d pick up cupcakes for the kid in the morning and drop them off at school. She’d always told me the parents ordered them and asked her to pick them up. I know that’s along the lines of giving out money. But it wasn’t about the money for her. She told the teachers it was so no kid would feel left out, because she was always the financially excluded child growing up and knew how it could negatively impact their education.

I got a small surgery about a week ago and my husband drove me to and from it and when we arrived home he brought me flowers and balloons. He has been cooking for me and and sleeping with me in the living room (since my head is suppose to be elevated) and I just never thought I would find someone this nice. It makes me tear up. I find that a lot of the times he is an example for me to follow, I sometimes am not that considerate, but now that I have been with him for a couple of years, his actions make me want to be more and more considerate towards him just like how he is with me.

My father in law stopped coming to Sunday dinners for almost a year, and my husband finally confronted him about it at Christmas, more hurt than angry. “You used to never miss one,” he said. “What changed.” His dad went quiet for a long moment before answering, “Your mother’s been gone three years and I still set the table for two out of habit most nights. Watching your family around that table just made the empty chair at mine harder to go home to afterward, that’s all it was.” Nobody in the family had thought to ask what he went home to after those dinners. My husband started driving him home himself after that, every week, just so the empty chair had a little less silence in front of it. That kind of wisdom about grief doesn’t always announce itself, sometimes it just looks like someone quietly skipping dinner for a year.

My wife loves me very much, and vise versa. When she started working from home at the start of the coof, I quit my job to go back to school so I could be home with her every day, because we truly are best friends. We’ve been together 4 years, but only married since September. Anyway, the other morning when she was getting up extra early to go to a yoga class, before she got out of bed she did something that no one has ever done before. I was kind of half awake just because I felt movement. She was brushing her fingers through my hair for a good three minutes and then kissed me on the cheek before getting out of bed. I know it doesn’t sound like much, but as a man, even a small gesture like that from someone you love is enough to keep the darkness at bay for a little while. I implore all of the ladies (or anyone of any gender in a relationship) to do the little things. It really does mean the world to us

My mother, who had recently gotten out of a very bad marriage, moved back home from Colorado and had only the bare essentials with her. My wife and I gave her our old small Christmas tree so she could have something in her new apartment, and when my family went over to visit her, my daughter (7) commented on how she didn’t have a star on top of her tree. “Well, I’ll be getting one next year” my mother said. Fast forward 2 weeks, and my kids are making their lists for Santa. The last line on my daughter’s list was “A star for grandma’s christmas tree.” This brought my mom to tears, that a 7 year old who would normally be thinking about Barbie dolls and stuffed animals would put something like that on her list. My wife and I did our shopping, and got a star tree topper. My mom came over Christmas morning to open presents, and the last gift was for my mom, from Santa. My mother opened the gift (knowing what it was, of course) and did her best to act surprised. The look on my daughter’s face. Her expression. That magic that only a child who still believes in Santa could experience. Priceless. “He got my list!!!! I put that on my list for you!!” Her act of selflessness went much further than just that. Love is a powerful thing. I’m so proud of her.

Our family’s Fourth of July tradition almost got cancelled this year because half the relatives were fighting over money for the rental house, until my grandmother quietly solved it by hosting everyone in her own backyard instead, lawn chairs and a garden hose sprinkler for the kids, nothing fancy. My cousin complained under her breath that it wouldn’t be the same without the lake house. By the end of the night, watching all the cousins running through that sprinkler while the adults actually talked to each other for once instead of splitting off into separate boats, even she admitted it was the best Fourth we’d had in years. Happiness that summer didn’t cost anyone a dime, it just needed a hose and everybody stuck in the same yard for a few hours.