Thursday Thinking – Noras and Bonnies

Last week while I was still in Seattle I read an on-line article in my hometown newspaper about a woman named Nora.  She died last summer when she was 87 years old, and had been a widow for several years prior.  She and her husband had no children.  Nora loved knitting, gardening, and helping out on the farm.  She went to church and occasionally visited the senior citizen’s center.  She sounded like such a nice lady.

Nine months after Nora died, ten different charitable organizations in her community received a letter from her lawyer stating that Nora had left them each $237,500 dollars. Nora had $2,375, 000 when she died!  No one would have guessed it – not her fellow parishioners, not her fellow senior citizens, no one.  Most of the organizations had never even seen or heard of Nora, but that did not diminish their appreciation for her gift. 

I told Cali the story while she fed Levin and we talked about various good and kind people we know.  Bonnie, Cali and Abe’s primary teacher, was one of the people we remembered.  Bonnie taught the three year old Sunbeam class for years and years.  At the beginning of each year she bought each child his own box of crayons.  No big ice cream bucket of broken crayons out of the church library for her class, no sir, each child had his own sharp crayons.  Bonnie was the sole wage earner in her family so the crayons were a small sacrifice.  Cali said, “I remember she looked at my picture of a little girl wearing a skirt and she told me I was really good at drawing skirts.  And then I told her, ‘Oh it’s easy, I’ll show you how to draw one.  You just make a triangle like this.’ And then I drew one with my crayons she bought us as if she didn’t know how to draw a dress.”  Cali snort laughed at that point and said, “Funny how I’ve never forgotten that – which just goes to show you that you’re never too young to appreciate a compliment.  I'll bet she never knew how important it was to me that she said that and listened.”

Though there was a disparity in the dollar value in the above situations, there was no difference in that Bonnie and Nora both used their talents and means and made life sweeter for someone else.   

Today six women made my life sweeter.  Three brought me a birthday cake and then sat and visited for an hour. 

Later three more women took me to lunch and brought gifts. 

We visited for several hours.  It was plain invigorating . . . and fun.

Life is clear full of Bonnies and Noras, and that’s what I’ve been thinking about.