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Authors: Catherine Ryan Hyde
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area with pine-scent Glade, he complained bitterly about the smell and said it made him cough.
A T FIRST HE’D JUST COME BY TO TALK, and that was good enough, and Mrs. Greenberg had never expected more.
She was right near the end of his paper route, which he changed around just a little so her house would be the very last. He’d leave his big, heavy old bicycle on its side on her lawn and bring the paper right to her door and knock, knowing as he did that it was a bother for her to go out after it. She was so pleasedby his thoughtful attention that she always offered him a glass of cherry Kool-Aid, which she bought specially for him, and he’d sit at her kitchen table and talk to her. About school mostly, and football, and then a special project he had thought up for his social studies class, and how he needed more people he could help, and she said she had some gardening to be done, though she couldn’t afford to pay much.
He said she wasn’t to pay anything at all to him, and what she paid to others needn’t be money, unless that was what she had plenty of. And then he drew some circles for her on a piece of paper, with her name in one, and told her about Paying Forward.
“It’s like random acts of kindness,” she’d said, but he disagreed. It was not random, not at all, and therein lay its beauty, built right into the sweet organization of the deal.
It was a foggy Saturday morning when he came by, six o’clock sharp as promised, and they stood in the mist in the front yard, the blue-gray paint peeling from her worried little house, and the smell of damp in the air, and little drips from the oak trees overhead cool in her hair.
He touched the roses as if they were puppies with their eyes still closed, or rare old books edged in gold leaf, and she knew he’d love her garden and it would love him back. And that something was being returned to her which had been away too long and had kept too much of her away with it.
“How is the project going so far?” she said, because she could see it was important to him, a subject he liked to talk a lot about.
His brow furrowed and he said, “Not so good, Mrs. Greenberg. Not so good.” He said, “Do you think that maybe people won’t really pay it forward? That maybe they’ll just say they will, or even sort of mean to, but maybe something’ll go wrong, or maybe they’ll just never get around to it?”
She knew it was a genuine problem in his mind, one of those Santa Claus crossroads of childhood that shape or destroy a person’s faith forevermore, and this boy was too good to turn astray.
So she said, “I can only in truth speak for myself, Trevor, and say that I really will get around to it, and take it every bit as seriously as I know you do.”
She could still remember his smile.
He worked so hard that day, and wouldn’t even stop for a Kool-Aid break but once, and when he finished she tried to slip a five-dollar bill in his hand, above and beyond and in no way connected to paying it forward, but he wouldn’t hear of it.
He worked all weekend, and four after-school and after-paper-route days on the garden, and said next week he would come around and paint her fence and window boxes and porch railing with two fresh coats of white.
She wondered if her son, Richard, would notice the difference.
S HE WALKED TO THE GROCERY STORE SLOWLY, loosening her tight joints and muscles as they warmed to the strain. Just to get out of the house. Imagine the sadness in that, when your son comes to visit and you mostly wish to be somewhere else.
It was late dusk on the Camino, with the car headlights glowing spooky in the half-light as she pulled her little two-wheeled wire cart behind her over the sidewalk cracks. Mrs. Greenberg always took the same route to the same store, being comforted by sameness.
Terri was working as a checker that evening and Matt as a bagger, two of her favorite people in the world. No more than twenty, either one of them, but
A T FIRST HE’D JUST COME BY TO TALK, and that was good enough, and Mrs. Greenberg had never expected more.
She was right near the end of his paper route, which he changed around just a little so her house would be the very last. He’d leave his big, heavy old bicycle on its side on her lawn and bring the paper right to her door and knock, knowing as he did that it was a bother for her to go out after it. She was so pleasedby his thoughtful attention that she always offered him a glass of cherry Kool-Aid, which she bought specially for him, and he’d sit at her kitchen table and talk to her. About school mostly, and football, and then a special project he had thought up for his social studies class, and how he needed more people he could help, and she said she had some gardening to be done, though she couldn’t afford to pay much.
He said she wasn’t to pay anything at all to him, and what she paid to others needn’t be money, unless that was what she had plenty of. And then he drew some circles for her on a piece of paper, with her name in one, and told her about Paying Forward.
“It’s like random acts of kindness,” she’d said, but he disagreed. It was not random, not at all, and therein lay its beauty, built right into the sweet organization of the deal.
It was a foggy Saturday morning when he came by, six o’clock sharp as promised, and they stood in the mist in the front yard, the blue-gray paint peeling from her worried little house, and the smell of damp in the air, and little drips from the oak trees overhead cool in her hair.
He touched the roses as if they were puppies with their eyes still closed, or rare old books edged in gold leaf, and she knew he’d love her garden and it would love him back. And that something was being returned to her which had been away too long and had kept too much of her away with it.
“How is the project going so far?” she said, because she could see it was important to him, a subject he liked to talk a lot about.
His brow furrowed and he said, “Not so good, Mrs. Greenberg. Not so good.” He said, “Do you think that maybe people won’t really pay it forward? That maybe they’ll just say they will, or even sort of mean to, but maybe something’ll go wrong, or maybe they’ll just never get around to it?”
She knew it was a genuine problem in his mind, one of those Santa Claus crossroads of childhood that shape or destroy a person’s faith forevermore, and this boy was too good to turn astray.
So she said, “I can only in truth speak for myself, Trevor, and say that I really will get around to it, and take it every bit as seriously as I know you do.”
She could still remember his smile.
He worked so hard that day, and wouldn’t even stop for a Kool-Aid break but once, and when he finished she tried to slip a five-dollar bill in his hand, above and beyond and in no way connected to paying it forward, but he wouldn’t hear of it.
He worked all weekend, and four after-school and after-paper-route days on the garden, and said next week he would come around and paint her fence and window boxes and porch railing with two fresh coats of white.
She wondered if her son, Richard, would notice the difference.
S HE WALKED TO THE GROCERY STORE SLOWLY, loosening her tight joints and muscles as they warmed to the strain. Just to get out of the house. Imagine the sadness in that, when your son comes to visit and you mostly wish to be somewhere else.
It was late dusk on the Camino, with the car headlights glowing spooky in the half-light as she pulled her little two-wheeled wire cart behind her over the sidewalk cracks. Mrs. Greenberg always took the same route to the same store, being comforted by sameness.
Terri was working as a checker that evening and Matt as a bagger, two of her favorite people in the world. No more than twenty, either one of them, but
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