Five Minutes of Kindness

More than thirty years ago, I received a blond, 1950s-era (estimate) piece of furniture for five minutes of kindness.

I had visited a stranger in the hospital, the mother of a friend of someone my mother knew. This woman (I was told) was Catholic, in poor health, and experiencing depression, too.

Our pastor always stressed the importance of ministering to others, and this was my first time "ministering."

I popped a tuna casserole in the oven, grabbed a rosary, and drove away to the hospital across town. My husband worked an afternoon shift at the time. So once I arrived, I could only stay one hour before I had to leave.

I parked, hurried up to the room, and the woman was sound asleep. So I waited.

She awakened five minutes before I had to leave, a bit jolted by a stranger in her room. Her son arrived around the same time. So he made the introduction. I shared a bit of hard-earned inspiration and left.

That was a Monday afternoon. She died Wednesday morning.

Her son said my visit made such a difference to her, that he offered me her favorite piece of furniture, the hutch. But before he could deliver it, another relative claimed it. He was very apologetic. But my visit was from my heart; I wasn't looking to receive anything.

Two years later, that relative went into a nursing home. The son called and once again offered me the hutch. It's a very heavy piece of furniture. But it's gone where we've gone.

When we move from Marycrest to Channahon, we took it with us. When we lost the home in Channahon and moved to my mother's, it was one of the few items that went into our small storage unit. When four of us moved into a small apartment, we took it with us. It went to the first townhome, the second townhome, the third townhome.

Gilded Age Furniture Restoration recently "restored" the piece, along with my grandmother's dresser. The hutch holds some extra special dishes, such as pieces that belonged to familu members who are no longer with us.

Timothy has already claimed the piece after I die.

One of the reasons why this piece is so important to our family is the story behind it. That story proves that each act of kindness, sincerely given, can literally change someone's life.

The world is never not in need of kindness, I think.

Happy Monday!

My Grandmother's Dresser

If you live in the Will County, Illinois, area, you should know about Gilded Age Furniture Restoration at 473 Ruby Street in Joliet. Phone number is 815-726-8493.

That company just refinished two pieces of antique furniture for us. One is my maternal grandmother's dresser, which we're using as a coffee bar in our townhome. The other piece (for a separate post, much longer post), is way off to the far right in the photo below, past the kitchen table.

By the way, all those boxes to the left of the coffee bar are nearly thirty years of photos that were never put into photo albums (because I became a single mom and worked two jobs through 2012, when Ron's dementia was becoming apparent). 

We did buy a scanner in 2019. Now we just need to make/find some really dedicated time to process all those photos (including the ones in the photo albums, dating back to 1981), so all six kids can have digital copies.

My maternal grandmother died shortly after my seventh birthday in July 1968, and rather suddenly, it seemed to us. But apparently she had been ill a very long time and never told anyone.

This dresser and a double bed were the only furniture I recall in her small bedroom of the two-family bungalow on Chicago's South side where she lived. I slept in that bed with her whenever I stayed with her. When my uncle moved out of the home in the early 1990s, he offered the family anything we wanted in that house. I wanted the dresser.

When I moved into our current townhome in August 2021, I set the dresser right under this window and turned it into a coffee bar. But our old Keurig developed a leak and ruined it. So Rebekah went looking for someone to restore it and founded Gilded Age.

Now, not everything sitting on it belongs to the coffee bar. The dishes and the baskets are for my son. The goblets are gifts for co-workers. The rest actually belongs there: coffee, tea, cups, and little "coffee" gifts from friends, who are virtually present with us for each cup.

Gilded Age did an amazing job, right?

Happy Monday!