Kindness Counts by Cappy Hall Rearick

Thanksgiving was just three days behind us, and the Charleston South Carolina weather was surprisingly warm. My thirteen-year-old granddaughter decided to go for a walk, but as is often the case with Maggie, she walked too far and wore herself out which necessitated a call to her mother on her iPhone, the one permanently attached to her.

“Mom, I walked all the way to Harris Teeter and I’m way too tired to walk home. Can you pick me up at the store?”

She clicked off and then, like any other teenager, immediately began texting. Right in the middle of a message to her bestie, Maggie felt a tap on her arm. She jumped. Images of Freddy Krueger quickly produced her fight-or-flight reflex.

When she turned to face the person tapping her arm, there was no monster. The sad eyes gazing into Maggie’s belonged to a frail, homeless woman wearing a frayed mask.

“I was wondering,” the woman said, “if you would buy me a slice of pizza.”

Maggie might have turned away. She might have replied with a loud NO! GO AWAY! She might have ignored the woman.

But she didn’t.

“Sure,” she said to the woman. “I’ll buy you a slice.”

Before Maggie got into the store to buy it, the woman called out to her, “Tell ‘em to put lots of onions and pepperoni on it, but no anchovies.”

The woman’s last-minute order tickled Maggie and made her grin as she walked into the store. Then she did something I don’t think many kids her age would have thought to do. Turning back, she asked the woman, “How about a Coke or a Pepsi to go with the pizza?”

The woman grinned. “Oh yes. A Coke would be good.”

When my granddaughter told me about the incident, I was proud of her, so glad that in a world gone crazy with greed, her generosity of spirit was and is, alive and well. 

Socrates must have had a low opinion of youth when he said, “Children today love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter instead of exercise.” 

He had more to say on the subject about kids in his ancient world. I quote him now only to illustrate how easy it is, even today, to criticize and give up on our young people, especially teenagers. Maggie’s good heart and her generous spirit negated what Socrates said. Maybe adults need to look deeper into the hearts of our young. After all, they are the future.

For over four years, we have lived by a different set of rules than we did BC (before Covid). None of us are likely to admit it, but due to the pandemic and the need to stay safe, it was often easy to adopt a “Me Attitude.” Maybe we didn’t completely forget about other people, but out of necessity, we concentrated on family and friends in our personal orbit. It’s time to change that. 

A few years ago, people all over our country participated in Random Acts of Kindness. They didn’t do it because it was good for them or made them feel better about themselves, but because it was the right thing to do. Books were written recapping experiences of people who randomly paid it forward by helping total strangers when they saw a need and fulfilled it. Simple as that. The world was made a little kinder by their random acts. 

We have lived through, and even now still struggle with viruses that curb the lifestyles of people in our world. Perspectives shifted and forced us to change our way of thinking about so much when Covid-19 hit. It is important for us to remember that we are all in this thing together. Although there is not a total solution to all the woes of the world, we can still make a difference by incorporating kindness in our lives. 

Let’s bring back Random Acts of Kindness. It's the kind thing to do.

What the world needs now is love, sweet love.

It’s the only thing that there's just too little of.

What the world needs now is love, sweet love

No, not just for some, but for everyone.

 

 

Big Mama Pulls the Plug

By Cappy Hall Rearick

Hello! Thank you for calling the UAM, Universal Answering Machine, the official replacement for a human voice. Press 1 to leave a message. Press 2 to leave a callback number and a machine will get back to you hopefully before you die.

Beep!

(Sigh) “This here is Big Mama Nature calling and I’m tired of leaving messages for you. I’ve got plenty to say so listen up ‘cause I’m not gonna to say it again.

“FYI, I’m not going to be Big Mama Nature any more ‘cause y’all have done wore me out. I am so outta here.

“Just so you know, I’ll gather up a few of my things before I leave. They go with me because they were always mine, never yours. You took for granted that my things belonged to you, but you were dead wrong! They were a loan. Today is your personal Chapter Eleven Day.

“I’m taking all of the birds with me, every last one of them. Sparrows, ducks, egrets, gulls, especially the egrets and gulls. OMG! What you’ve done to my seabirds is unspeakable. To make matters worse, you gave my little chickies and piglets the Flu. Well, you won’t get any more chances to hurt my babies ‘cause Big Mama Nature takes care of her own.

“I’m reclaiming the rain forests and all of its inhabitants. You never “got” their simple logic no matter how many times it was explained, so forget about the rain forests. They’ll be well protected under my personal supervision.

“The Mississippi River is high on my list of retrievable things. How can I not take back the Mighty Mississip after the way you’ve treated her? She’s crying out for my healing touch. The Great Lakes, the Colorado River and the Pacific Ocean will be coming with me, too. You can have New Yawk City and every drop of water surrounding it; it’s too far gone for me to fix.

“Originally, I’d planned to leave you the Gulf of Mexico because I thought you’d learned from my Katrina wake-up call. Something so devastating should have gotten a big blip on your unconscious radar, but that didn’t happen. Instead of helping with the clean up, you whined and carried-on like a bunch of wussies and then let BP come in and turn the entire Gulf into a deep fat fryer. I’m taking the Gulf. You don’t deserve it.

“The United States East Coast beaches are mine, mine, mine. It’ll take a millennium before even I can get them clean again, but I’m not called Big Mama for nothing.

“There are some mountain ranges I’ll collect on my way out, the ones you haven’t gotten around to leveling. You won’t miss them since you stripped away their natural resources long ago. I intend to rescue what’s left of them before your bulldozers turn them into cornmeal mush.

“I am also taking back the air you’ve been polluting for the last century. I need what little is left so that my birds can keep flying and my rain forests can flourish again. Chances are, even I won’t be able to undo much of your damage, but I’ll give it a shot.

“I should remind you that the minute I take back the air, clouds will vanish before you can say Boo Hoo! That’s a fact, Jack. There will be no more clouds, but you won’t miss them because you never bothered to look up anyway.

“I’m willing to leave the moon for now, but the sun goes with me. Don’t even think about giving me any lip about it. I created sunrises to wake you up and get you going every morning. Those gorgeous sunsets? They were there for you to reflect on the beauty surrounding you. But you blew it, Bubba, when you took me and my gifts for granted. I am so not happy.

“You figured the sun would come up and the sun would go down forever, didn’t you? Well, you figured wrong. Now you’ll have to remember what that lucky old sun looked like and how your skin tingled from its warmth. It can’t replace the real deal but you can text the memory of it to your grandkids.

“I’ll be back for other things later. You won’t realize they’re gone until you need them, then you’ll be shocked to discover that they are no longer available for you to abuse. If history is any indication, you’ll be more inconvenienced than sad. (sigh)

“I loved you from the beginning of time, loved you with all my heart. For eons, I forgave you your negligence and overlooked your ignorance. I even chalked up your indifference to human evolutionary learning deficiencies. I’m ashamed to say I forgave you for your folly.

“But I will not forgive you for the shambles you’ve made of my beautiful earth. I trusted you to love, nurture and protect it. I didn’t think for a nano-second that you would destroy it. You have broken my heart. (Sigh)

“There’s no doubt that the human blueprint needs tweaking. I wish I had it in me to take you back to the drawing board, but you have drained me bone dry.

“Don’t bother trying to get in touch with me. (Sigh) You couldn’t be bothered to acknowledge my many call outs, so we are so done.

Like the Big Guy says, “It’s not nice to fool Big Mama Nature.”

Bleep!

Heads Up!

 

By Cappy Hall Rearick

Welcome to the Church of the Holy Cabbage. Lettuce pray. ~Author Unknown

I loved the sound of my mother’s voice. It was pure Southern, magnolia smooth. I heard it as she was wheeled into surgery. She told me not to worry, that she would be back. She was wrong about that.

One day last week while grocery shopping, I heard her voice again. She told me to buy brown sugar. As clearly as if she had been wheeling my buggy herself, she said, “Go over to aisle six and pick up some brown sugah.” When she wanted to, my mama could smooth out the end of a word and cradle it in mid-air for five minutes. Listening to her talk was akin to snoozing in a Pawley’s Island Hammock. 

Right after the brown sugar episode, I heard her singing an Irish ballad one day while I was making up my bed. I remembered that song from my childhood — a sad tune. I used to go to bed with tears in my eyes after she sang it to me. But last week, when I heard the familiar soprano melody drifting throughout the house like elevator music, oddly enough, I didn’t feel sad. It felt like slipping my feet into a pair of old Weejuns.

Cooking supper that same night, (chicken and dressing, butterbeans, rice and sliced tomatoes), I heard her voice again. She told me to put more sage in the dressing. So! We were back to the Seasoning War, were we? Too many cooks in the kitchen, blah, blah, blah.

The next day while driving to Asheville, she broke into the Oldies But Goodies on the radio. 

“Turn around and go home.” The voice said it as if asking me for a second helping of that cornbread dressing (the one that needed a touch more sage). 

Up to that point, I had not responded to this odd communication from my mother. After all, she had been dead for over thirty years and besides, I never talked back to her even when she was alive. But the idea that I should deep-six my shopping trip based on a voice only I could hear? Well … that wasn’t going to happen.

For the rest of the ride, her voice Xeroxed itself in my ears. Go back home! Go back home! Go back home! By the time I got to the mall my head was splitting from the pounding in my eardrums. 

Glancing in the car mirror, I saw that I was turning green around the gills, so I decided to forget shopping and go back home. The thought of wrapping up in a blanket cocoon in my own little nest felt right, so I left the mall and headed home without one single purchase. 

I boogied down I-26 thinking Ibuprofen thoughts washed down with a dry martini when Mama’s voice suddenly blurted out again. “Slow Down!” 

Since I was going over eighty, I said, “Yes ma’am.” But my headache did not slow down when the car did. Can’t win ‘em all.

I closed my eyes for a moment and when I opened them, I saw an overturned eighteen-wheeler only a nanosecond in front of me. I braked as fast as I could and was barely able to avoid broadsiding a truck full of iceberg lettuce. 

I watched in horror as hundreds of small green heads rolled off the truck and down I-26, bouncing onto unsuspecting cars. Grateful that my aching head was still attached, I gulped air (lots of it) while my heart did a 1950’s shag step. 

Back home, I grabbed a soft blanket and snuggled down in a fetal position. Could Guardian Angles be real? Was Mama my personal G.A.? Had she just saved me from becoming an Interstate Tossed Salad? 

So now, any time I hear her voice, I listen up. My personal G.A. might be giving me winning lottery numbers. Even angels know that writers don’t earn squat.