People Are Nice

When I was in my early 20s I lived in a low-rent neighborhood of Washington DC with my boyfriend, Kirby. We had just graduated from art school and we were adamant that we weren’t going lead conventional suburban lives. Kirby was a brilliant furniture designer (still is) and I was going to be a successful potter (um, yeah). In the meantime, Kirby worked in construction and I waited tables. We were broke-ass.

We lived in a basement apartment (in DC they like to call them “garden apartments” for some absurd reason) on a tree-lined street full of lots of young and poor folk just like us. We didn’t know anyone except for Kirby’s family, and it took us a while to make friends.

One day, I started to get anonymous gifts and letters in our mailbox. They weren’t anything extravagant—just handwritten notes to tell me how special I was, cool seashells, poems, drawings, and things like that. It was clear that someone on my street was gifting them, but I had no idea who. I’ll tell you what though: those thoughtful little tokens meant a whole lot to me. They meant that someone was seeing from the outside that I needed a little love and mothering. And that person wasn’t in it for the credit or the gratitude. It was a purely selfless expression of appreciation from one artist to another.

I vowed that someday I would do the same thing for someone else. But, like so many ideas, it fell by the wayside. In fact, I had pretty much completely forgotten about it.

Then last week I had a reminder.

I had to go to the genius bar at the mall to get my MacBook tuned up. I normally avoid the mall because it’s a vortex of self-control challenges and also just a really depressing place. Sure enough, during the hour and a half I had to wait for my laptop, I got magnetically sucked into the Lululemon store and ended up in a hypnotic trance buying a really expensive new hoody.

Here’s the thing with me and hoodies: I really can’t resist them. Because I work from home, my uniform is pajamas and a hoody. I’ve always had a thing for hoodies. And this hoody was the hoody of all hoodies. But, I charged it, and I felt pretty dismal about that.

The next day, I checked my mail, and there was an envelope without a return address. Inside: $100 and an anonymous note telling me it was for “something pleasurable.” Well, the order might have been reversed, but that money was obviously meant for my hoody, which I can now wear without buyer’s remorse.

As for the anonymous donor to my hoody fund, I now know who it is, but I’m going to keep it between us, because I think the power of the thank-you-free-gift is such a lovely idea.

And thanks to my generous friend, I not only have a new sweet hoody, but a reminder to honor the promise I made to myself so many years ago.