Kindness with Grace

Essay by Susan Hess. Feb. 6, 2017.

Dwight. Tall, thin, a bit frail. I guessed him to be close to 80. My boss, Ginny Post, told me his wife lived in a nursing home on the north side of town. The apartment they shared before she needed care lay several miles south. He must have lived on a limited income for every day he took a bus to see her.

For a town of 35,000, Medford had a bus service like those of much larger cities. The bus routes converged on a side street just off Main Street in front of The Lion’s Tale, Ginny’s store.

The name came because the store started out as a children’s book store. But then over the years, gifts were added and then dishware. Shelves loaded with wine glasses, plates, mugs, bowls filled an entire room.

If you studied the store, you could see it spilled over what had once been three buildings. The biggest room held wall-lined shelves of books surrounding a large open carpeted space. Often in the afternoon the special ed kids lay sprawled across the carpet paging books they pulled off the shelves. The kids took a public bus from school to downtown and transferred to another to reach home. In the half hour wait, they used The Lion’s Tale like a library.

After I’d worked there a few months, I mentioned to Ginny that the kids might accidentally damage the new books and that I thought they got in the way of our customers. I asked if I should say something to them. “No.” Her tone and look were, not stern, but unyielding. “The kids are always welcome here.”

Ginny was a doctor’s wife in a town where that meant something, and many other doctors’ spouses used status to set a distance between themselves and people with less money and influence. But Ginny was Ginny. She cleaned the store’s bathroom, took out the trash. She could have asked any of us who worked there to do it. One evening when I closed up the store, I forgot to take in the expensive windsocks that hung outside the front door. In the night, someone stole them. I called the next day to tell her and offered to pay for them.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “The next time is likely to be me who forgets.”

It’s been many years since I worked there and lived in Medford. But it’s always Dwight I remember when I think of The Lion’s Tale. From the kids’ book room, a couple of steps up took you to a small room, the main entrance to the store and where the store’s counter stood. On past that room was the dishware room. In memory, I see kindly Dwight sitting in the corner on the stool Ginny provided.

Like the kids, Dwight had a wait to transfer buses. Along the sidewalk, the bus district had installed some nice, but uncovered benches. Passengers waited for their buses in Rogue Valley’s 103 degree weather and on its foggy rainy days.

Dwight must have come into the store one day, maybe to pick up a book for himself or a small gift for his wife, and Ginny learned his story. She was easy to talk to, over time she got to know him. Through the store’s big windows she’d see him as he waited. But one day when the valley launched one of its cold drenching rains, she asked Dwight in. She told him we had been having some shoplifting in the dishware room, and we didn’t have a way to see into all the nooks and behind the shelves. She wondered if, while he waited for the bus, he would mind sitting in there to keep an eye on things.

We noticed that she put a stool for him close to the heater in that room. I didn’t think about it at the time, but he must have known. Two gracious people. Ginny making it seem he was doing us a favor, and Dwight accepting her kindness with grace.

For me, she became a model for a way to treat people. In the years since, I’ve often fallen way short of the mark, but I knew what the goal looked like, and I think I’ve worked my way closer.

It has been a turbulent time these last few months and it promises to bring more. I think it’s worth keeping in mind the Ginnys and Dwights we know and have known. To keep in mind how we want to be.

Paid Advertisement: