Dear Mrs. H,

I don't know if you remember me, but I remember you very well. In fact, I think about you almost every day because of something you did a long time ago. You gave me a gift probably without even knowing you did. Your gift came when I volunteered to work on your hot lunch committee at our children's school.

You always brought a box from home, inside which was something yummy you had baked, wrapped in foil and tucked into a nest of aprons and old faded kitchen towels.

I remember that while we moms new to the committee stood in the kitchen sipping coffee (that you'd brewed for us) and eating your divine coffee cake or banana bread, you'd empty the box of towels, towels that had been cut in half or torn in two and clearly used and washed and dried over and over again. Then you'd fold them all, faded stripes, florals, and solids, into one neat little stack. Precisely folded, carefully stacked the towels were a Tide-scented oasis of order and precision in a room about to be filled with just the opposite: chaos. Two hundred children running and shouting and laughing as they lined up at the window to get the one lunch a week that they didn't have to bring from home. Pizza! Hamburgers! Hot dogs! Fruit punch!

Bedlam!

At the beginning of my days there at hot lunch, my thoughts mirrored the melee in the cafeteria, as if my head were filled with those little colorful clattering balls in a toddler's popcorn push toy. A seriously ill husband and the stress that brought was always on my mind; so the chaos in the lunch room just seemed to add to the anxiety I felt. But then one day I noticed the calm that surrounded you. You brought a sense of peace with you, and in those towels you folded so methodically and deliberately, I began to hear "there, there," with every fold you made. Just watching you soothed me from then on.

Of course it's possible I have embellished this in my memory over the ensuing years. Maybe you didn't always bring baked goods. Perhaps there weren't as many towels as I remember. And maybe they didn't smell like Tide.

But what I do know is this. The serenity I felt watching you fold those old towels was a gift I took away from the Our Lady of Grace School hot lunch program.

~

Now many years later when I leave for work, I fill my water bottle and grab an apple for lunch. As I walk through the doorway in my kitchen, I pass an old yellow mixing bowl on the counter that has a stack of towels in it. And just like yours were, mine are faded stripes and florals and solids, torn in two and washed and dried over and over and over again. Still I recall your serenity when I see the towels, and I am reminded to bring the same thing, the same "there, there," to people like I was then, people whose thoughts are bouncing in their heads like little wooden balls in a push toy.

At the time, I don't think it ever occurred to me to thank you for your gift. Now, I say it every day.

Thank you, Mrs. H.