WordPress Weekly Challenge: Honey versus Vinegar

Small moments of kindness peek through our everyday lives, from your neighbors’ “Good morning!” to a surprise “I’ll take care of that for you” at the office. This week, we want you to explore what that kindness means to you, and share it with others.

Kindness has many faces and of course you can always say it with flowers if someone has helped you or saved an embarrassing situation, but it does not often happen that you are at the receiving end of the flowers. I was active many years in the voluntarily first aid group in our village. We were not asked to be kind, it was our duty to be kind. If you saw an accident happen you helped. Kindness means to me that someone has helped without asking them to help. It is a rare occurrence everyone is busy with their own life and affairs but it happens now and again and your faith in the human race is perhaps restored, be it in a small dimension.

It was a day sometime in late spring. The sun appeared now and again and temperatures climbed a little: definitely too warm for the winter jacket. I decided to rethink my dress organisation. It was not cold enough for jeans with a handy zipped up pocket containing the purse with credit cards and money and second pocket containing the keys. I decided on a lightweight jacket and trousers. I did not have my special thief-proof pockets, but I had a pocket in the jacket big enough to contain everything, so I thought.

My husband and I arrived at the supermarket, parked the car and travelled on the escalator to the first floor where the hunting could begin. It was the usual shopping expedition for food and other sundries. We arrived at the cash desk and I put my hand in the pocket of the jacket to take out my purse. Huh! no purse. I looked in the other pocket as in such situations you try everything but no purse. It was no longer there – how embarrassing: Mr. Swiss (husband) to the rescue. He produced his credit card and we escaped with the shopping.

I was naturally quite disturbed. It was clear that I had lost my purse. It had fallen out of the pocket in the jacket, which was not as safe and sure as the blue jeans zipped up pockets. Oh dear and what to do. There is a general counter in the supermarket for queries, so I looked in and asked if anyone had surrendered a purse.

“What is in the purse?” asked the lady at the desk.

I listed the various credit cards and money which was not so much. “My name is on the credit card” I said and gave the lady my name.

She opened a drawer and there was my purse, complete with everything.

“A lady found it.”

“Do you have her name, address or telephone no?”

“Yes“

I still had my mobile phone, which was in the other pocket in the jacket – still.

I now had my purse and cards and sat on a bench and dialled the lady’s number that had found it.

She told me that it was not the first, but about the third time she had found a purse with money and returned it. No-one had ever bothered to thank her for finding it and this was the first time. I sensed from her voice that she was probably about my golden oldie age. She was so happy that someone had taken the trouble to thank her. I was, of course, overjoyed to have all my possessions again.

It was only a month before when I had boarded the train to the airport and in the crush when boarding the train, that a thief and put his hand in my bag and stolen my purse, this time containing my Swiss identity card, credit cards and money. I was stranded at the next station, luckily with my mobile telephone and could stop all my cards by phone and inform Mr. Swiss what had happened. I did not even have the money for a return ticket. Mr. Swiss paid it at our local station and they told the next station to give me the ticket. This is actually the reason why I began to put all my valuables in a sealed up pocket and no longer a handbag, but this was only possible in Winter. And now my purse had again disappeared, but this time I was lucky.

I finished my conversation with the finder of my purse, thanked her again. She was so happy that someone had at last acknowledged her help.

Before I left for home I bought a box of chocolates known as Merci. I find them the best way to thank someone for their help. The lady called me at home the next day and was almost in tears. She thanked me for the chocolates and said it was the first time ever that someone had acknowledged her help and that there were still some good people in the world.

For me something natural, but probably not for all. 

Click here for more

WordPress Weekly Writing challenge

This week, I challenge you to mark your phone as off limits. Rather than giving into the urge to take a picture, write down your impressions of the scene. Who’s around? How does the air feel? What sounds do you hear? What emotions are you experiencing?

The black crow was picking the earth crumbs, snapping at something unseen by human eyes. Suddenly he startled and flew, but not far and precariously landed on the edge of a gravestone. He had a good choice in the graveyard, there were many gravestones, but he selected one of the newer stones, a white rough stone with black engravings showing who the owner is, or should I say was. There were no old worn stones in this graveyard. There are never old worn stones in this country, even the graveyards seem to be subject to a regular cleaning session, as the windows in the houses. Everything neat and tidy and if you were longer than forty years in this graveyard you were removed, making room for the next customer.

All this did not disturb the crow gazing from his high perch, speculating which stone to select for his next landing place. The gardener arrived with his truck filled with a new selection of heathers and other winter plants and the crow was disturbed. He flapped off to quieter pastures on the other side of the cemetery, where the family tombs were kept: those that were wealthy enough to stay and not be removed after their forty years sleep. Somehow the crow knew that this was a place of peace where there would be no disturbances. Perhaps a spider or insect might wind its way between the stones searching for a home. Here the gardener had nothing to do, it was privately organised by the descendants.

In the meanwhile the gardener and his men were busy hacking earth, removing old dead refuse of summer and reviving a grave with a display of pink and white heathers, here and there a hellebore, an evergreen perennial which would stay preserved until the Spring bulbs again arose to life. Life was a rarity in this place, but examples appeared in the form of relations of the dearly departed or just the inquisitive few reading names on the stones and remembering that they once knew this person some years ago Then they walked on.

There were blank spaces, covered with green grass, fading now into a greyish green, frozen by the fingers of frost that would appear at dawn, only to disappear when the midday light warmed the air. These places were ready and waiting to be filled, and filled they would be by the end of the year.

The crow decided to explore this empty spaces, there would definitely be a nice fat worm somewhere and then it saw a rowan tree hanging with its orange berries. A feast for crow eyes and for him alone: untouched and ignored by human hand. That meal was reserved for the birds, a human could die from eating such a berry.

More crows arrived sitting in the branches of the old trees and watching the men excavating, combing the earth at the foot of the gravestones. The truck was now emptied of its cargo, a bare surface was left. The truck driver turned the key in the driver’s cabin and the truck roared to life. It did not wake the inhabitants of the graves, they were still resting in their eternal sleep, but the crows rose in a black cloud, cawing and singing with their high pitched calls and flying away to the nearby forest of high trees.

They now had a view over the graveyard, where the stones were neatly placed row after row, each grave the same distance to the one before. Yes, even in death there had to be order. 

Click here for more