Safe

These acts of kindness, don’t just, benefit those on the receiving end, but also, the parties who’d shown them too!  Translated…

The year I came to Taipei, I rented a small stay on Tonghwa Street.

For a while, for many days on end, I’d heard the cries of young children from next door.  One day I got curious, tilted my head out to look, I saw a mom carrying a child, crying.

I’d asked her, what’s the matter?  She’d told me that her child ran a fever for two whole days, but she didn’t have the money to take him to the doctors.  Before she finished, I’d, asked her how much it’d cost to take her son to get treated?  She’d told me twenty dollars.  I’d pulled out the fifty dollar bill I had, handed it to her, told her to take her child to the doctors.

As this incident came to pass, I’d, forgotten, until one day after I’d come home from work, the landlady handed me a letter, said that it was from the younger woman who was moving out from next door.  In the letter, she’d thanked me for lending her a helping had in the most trying time of her life, but she didn’t have any money to pay me back, and now she’s moving, and she can only give her most prized possession, a piece of jade with “Safe” carved on it, to give to me, hoping, that I will be, watched over.

This piece of jade I’d hung around my neck ever since for over decades now, as my friends saw, they’d all commented on how beautiful it’d looked, and asked if it was expensive, and each and every time I’d replied, “it’s, PRICELESS!”

And so, this, is how an act of kindness had, given so very much to the person who’d shown it, because the woman was desperately in need of money to get her young son treated, the writer just, handed the money that was needed, because she knew, that a human life is worth a hell of a lot more than that amount, and the woman who was shown the kindness, kept the writer’s heart in mind, and, gave her the most priceless possession she’d ever owned, that piece of jade as she’d moved on, which the writer cherished ever since.