if all the world had a sarah…

by bam

sarah bd card

the doorknob, most often, is where i find her. or, rather, the bulging evidence of her having sashayed through the night, traipsing along the alley, lit by the moon and the beam of her iPhone, ferrying bags weighed down with her wares.

on any given midnight run, the wares might be tomatoes, enough to fill a stockpot and feed a small army; soups, bulging from zip-lock sacks; cakes, by whole or by half; marinara sauce, with meat or without; cucumbers in sizes and shapes and colors i never knew they’d invented.

some mornings, i swear the doorknob’s going to crack off its stem. some mornings, a vase of perky zinnias, or a rose clipped from her mama’s bush, or basil by the sinkful stands guard beneath the dangling bags.

used to be my fat cat would be waiting there too. he, too, waited for sarah. she’s the saint of the alley. she feeds a whole flock of us, night after night. the cats, she feeds always. and any stray critter who’s lame, or been bonked by the wilds. us humans she feeds whenever she finds a few extra hours in her kitchen. or when she finds time to get to her wild jungle of a tomato bed, where those red orbs of summer are all but bursting right now.

sarah comes, like santa or tooth fairies, without being seen. she comes in the night, and though i’ve only once or twice caught sight of her flashlight beaming ahead through the bushes, i imagine the gleam in her eye, as she sets out from her house with her arms full of deliciousness.

sarah lives to take care of folk. she moved home a few years ago to be by the side of her mama and papa, as they got old and older. as the steps in their fine old house got steeper and steeper, and the distance from the front door to the sidewalk, where the newspapers were plopped, it got farther and farther.

sarah moved home and in no time, their basement freezer was filled with her wares. (wasn’t long till ours was too.) sarah could open a restaurant. or a bakery. but instead she cooks and she bakes for love and love only.

long ago, she decided my little guy was a guy she could cook for. she knows all his favorite cookies and cakes. now, his friends do too. they come over to see what sarah’s got tucked under the glass cookie dome.

sarah’s birthday was yesterday, and, well, there was no way we could make enough of a fuss to capture the whole of the love in our hearts. but we tried. and the card up above is the one my not-so-little guy stayed up late in the night to draw and to pen with his poetry (that outline of an angel, and the words, “st. sarah”!!!). he left it on the kitchen table, so when i awoke on sarah’s birthday, there was — as there so often is — something that melted my heart. only this time it was for sarah, instead of from sarah. i tucked it into the little bundle of somethings we’d gathered. and i shuffled it down the alley, just like sarah does. i hung my sack on her doorknob, the hardware of the heart in this particular equation.

if all the world had a sarah….

if all the world knew what it was to awake to a fat bulging sack of pure goodness. if all the world was populated with neighbors who put in particular tomatoes, and certain kinds of herbs, just because they know someone nearby likes those particular certain somethings. if all the world had folk shuffling through the night, delivering kindness. dangling it from doorknobs.

i think of houston and the pictures i’ve been watching all week. the pictures of strangers hoisting old men and old ladies, tiny bundles of baby cradled in mamas’ arms. i think maybe there are quite a few sarahs. and maybe when the waters recede, the kindness will keep on rising. maybe…

i started this thinking wouldn’t it be grand if all the world had a sarah, and i’m wrapping it up thinking emphatically this: wouldn’t it be even more grand if we could all try just a little bit harder to be a sarah? to come under cloak of darkness, delivering goodness and kindness, leaving satchels of joy in our wake?

thank you, dear blessed sarah, patron saint of unheralded kindness and great bulging hearts. thank you for teaching my boys the wonder of kindness delivered by doorknob, night after night, with no desire for folderol or hoopla. and thank you too for the world’s best salt-sprinkled sliced tomato on rye.

love, me and t. and all of us who’ve been indulged by your infinite goodness

do you have a sarah in your life, and how has your sarah opened your heart and filled it with unheralded goodness?