The Taste of Kindness

It’s Random Acts of Kindness Week, so here’s what God’s kindness looked like to a third grader on a snowy February day in 1960.

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Some Sundays after church we drive forty-five minutes to have dinner with the Swensons at their farm in Sharon Springs. Arne is one of Daddy’s oldest friends. He’s a tall, ropey dairyman. Marta, Mrs. Swenson, is his round, smiling wife. Arne always sits at the head of the oval table in the middle of the dining room. His table is covered with a pink tablecloth, set with rosebud china, and adorned with his three daughters: beautiful Cindy, the eldest, sturdy Karen, my age, and Trina, a blonde baby. Mrs. Swenson sets a roast chicken before her husband and returns with steaming bowls of mashed potatoes and a slurpy gravy boat. We all dig in.

After dinner, the adults go through open French doors into the living room with two maroon armchairs and a squishy maroon sofa facing a roaring fire. Karen grabs a pink and black afghan off the back of the sofa, and we wrap up together on the piano bench in the dining room. She opens the red cover of John Thompson’s Teaching Little Fingers to Play and shows me how the black ants on the page match the white keys on the piano. With Karen’s help, I tap out “Row, row, row your boat. . .  life is but a dream.”  

This Sunday, Mommy has packed my round, red suitcase with the white poodle on the front and the white loop handle because I am spending a few nights with Karen during my mid- winter vacation.  After a quiet afternoon, I kiss Mommy, Daddy and brother Bruce, good-bye in the front hall amidst dripping boots, scarves and mittens hung over the radiator. Through the open door, I watch the taillights of the black Ford station wagon fade into the frigid night.

Behind me is a huge stairway.  “Is your room up there?”

Karen shakes her head.  “No.”  

“How come?”  

“I’ll show you.”  She leads me up the creaking steps to two empty bedrooms with peeling wallpaper and windows that rattle with the wind. “Daddy hasn’t had time to fix the upstairs yet, so we all sleep downstairs.”

Karen’s room has two twin beds and a crib that line the wall opposite the frosty window.  Mrs.  Swenson positions an old mattress in between the twins made up with pink and blue bunny sheets.  A tall bureau stands on one side of the ruffled curtains. On the other side is a dressing table, its bubbled veneer topped with little girl bottles of pink lotion and violet eau de toilette.  

In the morning, Karen and I walk down the road to the barn. A concrete runway separates two aisles of cattle. Arne and his hired man are moving among the cows hooking up stainless steel milking machines that fill the barn with the sound of their squish and squirt. Karen and I pet the big-eyed Holsteins looking out the barn windows full of cobwebs.  

“This one is Maybelle. She’s going to have a calf in the spring.” Karen scratches the cow’s nose.

After a lunch of alphabet soup, Mrs. Swenson says, “You girls want to go sledding?”

Karen and I look at each other and squeal.

Mrs.  Swenson helps us squirm into our snow pants and zip up our parkas. We pull on our knit caps and flip up our hoods. She bends down and ties red scarves around our necks and clips our wool mittens to our jacket sleeves. All bunched up, we’re ready for the arctic.  

Two Flexible Flyers are waiting on the front porch. We grab their ropes, waddle down the front walk, and trudge single file along the country road towards the pasture.

Karen climbs over the fence, and I pass her our sleds. Our breath forms alternating clouds as we huff and puff up the steep rise. The snow is covered with a glistening crust, so our boots break through with every step, leaving jagged holes in the slippery slope. Finally, at the crest, we plant our bundled bottoms on our sleds and place our red rubber boots on the wooden cross pieces used to steer. We hold the ropes and push off.  

“Yee-haw!” We’re riding bucking broncos across the snowy plain.  

Down, down we slide, streaking shadows in the low winter sun. The thrill is but a heartbeat. Without a word, we climb the hill over and over. With each slide, we grow wilder.  We go down headfirst. Headfirst holding hands.

From cowboys to circus stars, for my next trick, I stand on my sled, the rope taut in my snow-pilled mittens.  

The thin metal runners hit a footprint in the crust and lodge in the soft powder beneath.  The rope yanks out of my grip. My chin cracks the ice. My slick nylon snowsuit accelerates my descent. Lips, nose, cheekbones rub and rip against every icy opening in my path.  

When Karen slides to my side, the snow beneath my face is the bright red of a bloody snow cone. We’re both too terrified to cry. Silently we toss our sleds over the fence and hurry for home. Up the country road, past the barn, down the walk.  

Karen pushes the front door open. “Mommy!”   

Mrs. Swenson carries me into the kitchen and sets me on a stool beside the white enamel-topped table. She flies to the bathroom and returns with a box of Band-Aids and two clean blue washcloths. With eyes as big as Maybelle’s, Karen watches her mother fill a bowl with warm water. Mrs. Swenson wets the terrycloth and gently wipes my abrasions. Blood clouds the water as she rinses again and again.

Karen winces as a deep gash above my upper lip is revealed. Mrs. Swenson pinches the skin back together and secures it with two tiny blue Band-Aids covered in silver airplanes. She opens the freezer, pulls out an ice tray, and fills the dry washcloth with a handful of cubes. Gently placing the cold pack in my palm, she tells me to hold it over my mouth. After gently peeling off my boots and snowsuit, Mrs. Swenson leads me to the squishy maroon couch, and Karen tucks me in with the black and pink afghan.  

I don’t know how long I lay there beside the fire before Mrs. Swenson and Karen are back at my side. Pretty Cindy is holding the blonde baby. Mrs. Swenson exchanges my bloody washcloth for what looks like an empty hamburger bun spread with butter. I sit up and take a timid bite. It’s the best thing I’ve ever tasted. An empty hamburger bun?

When you’ve been served only foil-wrapped sticks of Blue Bonnet margarine in your seven short years of life, how can you imagine the glory of fresh, sweet butter, sun-kissed blades of summer grass transformed by the herd, churned and spread with the kindness of a farmer’s wife?

The scar above my mouth is still visible, a constant reminder of the taste of my own blood, exchanged for something infinitely better.  

Thanks to Ciprian Pardau for the featured photo of a snowy barn on Unsplash