A Wilde Box of Kindness

It's been a weird day. Strange talks I never actually imagined happening, strange emails with job ideas, strange packages in the mail, strange feedback from professors, strange behavior from myself. You know I skipped a class today? I've skipped two classes ever. We're talking elementary school until now.

The strange feedback was about my Wilde paper. I made some pretty stupid mistakes (re: started a sentence with a lowercase letter and without a subject, quoted a Wilde letter from "1989," etc), but they liked it. I scored 11 points higher than I anticipated and was told I have eloquence and flair in my writing. The paper doesn't actually count toward any class points, but it was enough to make me feel like the next three are in my realm of do-ables.

For so much of my life, being good at school has been the only thing that's mattered to me. This score and review of my work would have, at one point, been worthy of the refrigerator and a call home.

Their remarks gave me some much needed academic encouragement, but I've heard some other words recently that have stuck more strongly in my mind.

There's a couple in my small group with a math genius son (lucky freakin kid. I struggle with basic addition). Jonny told us that Heather's mantra for her son is this: "It's good to be smart. It's better to be kind."

I am good at doing smart. I am learning kindness.

Kindness is not only offering a spirit of grace and love. It's also knowing how to receive grace and love without flippancy or dismissiveness. It's a gentle gift, but it's a powerful gift.

I received in the mail today a powerful gift of another sort.

My mama sent me Thanksgiving in a box. :) Remember that poppyseed bread I talked up in a recent post?

Actual tears were shed over this box and bread. Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. It was really nice to come home to. Parents get it. Somewhere in those nine months before the kid comes, parents gain this incredible gift of third sight. They know when something's up, they know the right time to send you thanksgiving boxes or glitter glue in the mail so that it arrives on exactly the day you need it, they know exactly how to drive you completely insane with one single word, and they know exactly how to make everything better. All parents. Related or not. 

One month till I get to be driven crazy by mine in person.