KINDNESS RENDERED

Everyone should own a red shovel.

Mrs. Jennings.

I still see her standing on her porch, and she and I are in a snow globe built for two.

Go on, now git.

She'd shovel her sidewalk, thank you very much, but she always left a little for me to clean. Our unspoken pact was sealed with a wink and a shoo, now wave of her hand. It just happened that way one day, The Blizzard of ’71, as it would be known.

Get on home.

I was a ten-year-old with my red snow shovel, the fallout knee-deep. From then on, each snowfall, I would wait for my neighbor to turn out her lights for the evening. After dusk, she went to bed early, and the dinner dishes were washed and put away. I'd sneak over quietly and finish the last bit, retracing my bootprints in the snow.

When I woke, I'd find a quarter on our welcome mat and another pair of tracks back to her house. She rose before the sun, but occasionally, I'd glimpse her, wearing her man's red and black hunting jacket and parakeet yellow scarf.

That's all I knew her by—Mrs. Jennings. I didn't even know if she had a first name. First names were out of bounds for us kids back then. First names were a taste of the leather belt, Lava soap for dinner, or both.

My Mom said her husband was blown off the Sears Tower a few years before I was born. I was told he was an ironworker and an angel to his wife. Back then, they didn't always tie in those daredevils who erected skylines that sawed through virgin clouds.

Later, while in college, I received a call from an attorney in my dorm. Mrs. Jennings had passed away and left me a quarter in her will for kindness rendered.

I hid my tears from my roommates as new snow stacked outside.