Kindness gives birth to kindness.
- Sophocles
At some point in our lives we all go through a dark night of the soul, when our lives seem barren and pointless and painful. My dark night came in the aftermath of my divorce, and I felt it most keenly on the eve of my brother’s wedding. It was the first wedding I had attended since the divorce.
While I felt proud of my brother and happy for this new step in his life, I felt the emptiness of my own. That night, as I tossed and turned in my bed in the hotel, I was assailed by so many griefs: broken dreams, the raw fear that I might never have children, and the coolness of family and friends who, while sympathizing with me, pulled their own families closer, as if divorce might be an infectious disease. I prayed, begged and cried, not understanding why I had to go through all this. Loneliness loomed before me, and I wondered if my prayers reached heaven at all.
After the wedding I returned to my job in Norristown, Pennsylvania, knowing that I had to take my life in hand. I’d been renting a room from a very kind lady but wanted and needed my own kitchen, a place for my books, and maybe even a pet to share those lonely nights. I was tired of eating all my meals alone in diners or in my car. I might not have love in my life, but surely I could find a small place to call home.
Apartments were beyond my means, but I found a trailer - a dirty trailer - in a rundown park. With careful budgeting, I could afford it. I scrubbed from floor to ceiling. I sewed curtains from remnants and repaired the few pieces of broken furniture left by the previous owner. I bought a desk from a secondhand shop.
Wild roses, unplanned saplings and hedges long out of control bordered the overgrown yard. I clipped, mowed and weeded. Then one day, while planting mums, I looked up to find a dirty and ragged young boy in front of me.
“You live here, lady?” he asked. Before I could answer, another child ran up to us. There were more questions. Then more children emerged seemingly from nowhere. Soon an entire crowd - I counted fourteen children in all - gathered round me, all excitedly asking questions.
I soon learned that in that neighborhood, young children grew as wild and in some cases as neglected as the hedges I’d just pruned. But beneath dirty faces and stringy hair they grew far more lovely. And hungry. Hungry for food, warm clothes, shoes, guidance, attention and affection.
I could not supply all their needs but by the grace of God I did what I could. I bought flour in bulk and baked bread. The fragrance, steaming through open windows, drew them to my door. In exchange, while perched on kitchen counters or sitting cross-legged in my bay window, they colored bright pictures to decorate my refrigerator.
A few of the children could read, but they had no books. So I purchased a small bookcase from the secondhand shop and scoured flea markets and yard sales for children’s books. Together we set up a lending library in my kitchen. The children loved writing their names on “library cards” and marching out my door, two or three books tucked under their arm.
We read by the hour together, refreshing ourselves with warm bread and cold milk. We talked about school, reading, God, death, divorce and prison - all things that concerned them and their families.
I learned that my life was not so hard after all and it was no longer so lonely. At times my young community drained my finances and energies to the point of exhaustion. Often the children’s parents took advantage of my generosity. But on snowy, icy days I sometimes found a path shoveled to my mailbox, or the windshield of my car scraped clean. And as long as I had childish arms around my neck and laughter in my home, I didn’t worry. I had gained the shining light of trust from children’s eyes and was able to share my great love of books and reading with the most appreciative audience in the world.
I didn’t know then that one day I would find love and give birth to my own precious children, or that I would eventually become a school librarian or a lifetime writer of stories. But I didn’t need to know. I needed only to do what was before me, extending my hand one day at a time. And gradually, that dark night of the soul passed. My prayers in that lonely hotel room had been heard after all and I had been blessed many times over.
- Cathy Gohlke