Phyllis Beveridge Nissila

I don’t mind saying (and foregoing the eternal reward for keeping such things between only me and God) that I gave an old woman standing on the curb near my bank driveway exit fifty bucks for a ten dollar home-made bead necklace.

She didn’t have a sign or a dog; she wasn’t swiping on a cell phone with a cigarette perched between her lips, like some solicitors do that I don’t stop for.

Her wrinkled face was already forming an easy smile in anticipation of a possible sale, I suppose. But it wasn’t a hardened face, if that makes sense. Her eyes shone.

She held a long rod wrapped in multi-colored tissue paper hung with maybe twenty of her necklaces for sale, each one spaced just so and hung cleverly, I thought, with this little gadget you would close a necklace with only big enough to encircle the rod. Very precise.

She greeted me with her full smile, now, revealing missing teeth. Her hair was neat with a little wind-blown curl, and not entirely gray. Her clothes looked clean.

“I make these myself,” she said.

“How much?” I asked.

“Ten dollars,” she replied and held up the rod.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“Why?” she asked, a momentary look of concern shadowing the smile, but before I thought up an answer, she told me anyway. “Penny.”

I wondered why the sudden wariness. I hoped it wasn’t a habit for some reason.

“I’m Phyllis,” I said, “And I love those kinds of necklaces.” She brought her merchandise closer, I scanned the selection, each one a unique design, and picked out a multi-colored strand.

Ten bucks or not, I already knew I was going to give her a fifty, one of a few I had just gotten from my bank,  rolled tightly so that maybe she wouldn’t know until after I drove on, so maybe it would be an extra treat for her.

“Thanks, and God bless you, Penny,” I said.

A car rolled up behind me, and I turned into traffic, but not before hearing her say, “Oh, wow!” as she turned to go back to her spot on the curb.

Although she didn’t look as if she was going to spend it on cigarettes or wine, I didn’t care anyway.

For me it was one more bit of brightness on an unusually beautiful day, warm, sunny–no rain for a change in our rainy season–day. One of those that in spite of all the weighty distractions in the world just now you could be in the moment and follow your heart.

And do something special for someone else, too, should the opportunity arise.

And there was Penny on the curb…

Which is what Valentine’s Day could  be about, too, even if there is no special “other” with chocolate and roses, don’t you think? Even if you could buy your own chocolate and roses.

And it made me want to come home and share one of my favorite little poems with you, reader, again, and then offer the song below it, too, about the Gift-Giver of gift-givers. You know, the One Who made the roses, the cocoa beans, and Penny who made her beaded necklaces, and me, flush with a fifty I could spare…

But if you are not having a particularly shiny Valentine’s Day, here’s some encouragement:

“Life is mostly froth and bubble,

Two things stand like stone.

Kindness in another’s trouble,

Courage in your own.” (Adam Gordon)

Because, like the man says: