Ordinary Kindness

A friend sent me a belated Mother's Day gift yesterday. It was a link to Katrina Kenison reading a excerpt from her book, "The Gift of an Ordinary Day: A Mother's Memoir". I immediately forwarded it to all my friends who are mothers, so it became a deliberate act of kindness, making each of us richer as we passed it along.

I've been ruminating about ordinariness since my first surgery, although, I wouldn't have defined it as such. Katrina's insights reminded me of what I was feeling, but unable to translate. How do we go back to ordinary once the fundamentals of our lives have changed inescapably. Today the answer took shape in my consciousness, and was strangely shaped liked a dakband.....My four year old, my mother and I invaded our local high price coffee chain, searching for a moment to fuel up and sit down at the same time. All the seating areas were occupied. However, a kindly soul, sitting alone in an area with four seats invited us to join him. I looked at the books he'd been studying, 8 Minute Meditations and The Secret, looked at my four year old and asked him if was sure. He smiled, and we sat down. He didn't stay long, but when he got up to leave I offered him two dakbands. His reaction affirmed what I suspected yet was having trouble articulating. When we become unfamiliar or uncertain in our lives, it is the simple kindnesses we choose to do that restores us, and those around us, to ordinary.