One Step Forward

I used to babysit a handsom boy named R* who had a life unlike many children I've met. There are so many stories surrounding the recent hurricane, but my heart goes out to this little guy. He is incredibly creative, funny, intelligent, and imaginative and I write about him because of a random act of kindness that he was touched by.

R* had moved to Bayhead only a few months before the storm because his loving mother wanted a better place for him to grow up. They moved into an already lived-in space, having to put his and his mother's belongings in the garage until they could find another space to live. Nearly all of his toys, baby pictures, clothes, sports equipment, and all of his shoes were in the tightly-packed garage. When I helped them clean out the garage, we found that drawers 5 feet high still had bay water in them.  We worked as a team to throw away so much of R*'s life.  One of the few items we tried to save was his birth certificate in a soaked album.  His mother had tears in her eyes when she asked her son if she could throw away his action figures. With wisdom beyond his years he said, "Don't worry mom, we can throw it away. I don't need them." He showed so much resilience and strength that day, never once showing that he couldn't adapt to a new stage in his life.

I posted online that a young boy needed shoes and an anonymous person purchased $50 brand new shoes and shipped them to my house. This mother and son had been couch hopping, so we arranged to meet at their once lived-in Bayhead house. He was speechless when he saw they were DCs. He tried them on in the room he once slept in.

That generous person serves as an inspiration of what we could be doing for each other, regardless of where we live or our connections to the beaches or towns. We could give people the gift of finding that "first step" to recovery.