I just like this story from December 2019.

A wholesome and heartwarming story for the holiday season this week.

The snowstorm after Thanksgiving caught a lot of us off-guard. It’s hard to believe that we might see six-to-nine inches of snow weeks before Christmas, but we live in New England, right? Anyhow, the Raymond Compound is equipped with an older snowblower that successfully cleared the driveway on Monday to get me to work Tuesday morning. The second round of snow, however, is where our story begins.

My wife takes the snowblower and does roughly two-thirds of the driveway. The snowblower stops spinning, which is a problem for obvious reasons. She investigates and sees a piece is out of place or is not working properly. My wife, who knows more about mechanical things than I do (I can barely turn on my car some days), thinks she has identified the how, but not the why.

At this point, the mailman comes around to do his daily delivery. Dave, our primary mail carrier, has delivered to our house for decades. He has watched us grow up, move on, move out, move back in. He was always kind to my mother during her decline (her Alzheimer’s destroyed much of her memory, but not her enthusiasm for the daily arrival of “Dave the Mailman!”) and has always been a good guy. He hops out of his truck and takes a few moments to see if he can add small engine repair to his skillset. The consensus? The piece my wife identified was the likely culprit, but the solution was still in question. Hammer it in? Replace it?

Ill-equipped to solve this problem, she turned to Alexander’s Small Engine Repair over on the other side of town. She later told me that they always come highly recommended, and I had no idea what she was talking about, since, again, machines are Not My Thing. Still, she called them up and, apologetically acknowledging that they were likely very busy regarding snowblower repair, asked if they could give it a look.

The problem now? They were unable to pick it up until right before Christmas, but if we could get it to them ourselves, they could likely take care of it quickly. Of course, my wife drives a small Hyundai, and I drive a smaller Honda Fit. Even if my weak arms and my hands not toughened by manual labor could help lift a snowblower into a vehicle, we aren’t getting too far with what we have. So she does what we all do these days: post on Facebook.

The post was simple: can you deliver our snowblower across town? This is where more holiday magic comes in to play. A gentleman (who we later learned is a police officer in Millville) messages my wife and says he’ll be coming through Millbury in his truck and will gladly bring it over. No questions asked, just “I’m going to be in Millbury shortly and have a pickup truck.”

As my wife and Alexander’s go through the plan, the folks at Alexander’s ask in more detail what the issue is with our busted blower. My wife texts pictures, they tell her how easy a fix it is, and actively walk her through the whole process of resetting the problem piece over the phone. After her crash course in small engine repair, she turns the snowblower on and we’re back in business! It’s a Christmas miracle!

To add to the charm, our Facebook hero swings by just as the repair is complete, and is happy for us, checks out the status, offers to come back if the fix doesn’t stick, and rides off into the sunset. Plus, our neighbor saw the problems we were having and, at some point during the adventure, simply plowed out the rest of our driveway. Within a couple hours, we had a broken snowblower and a snowed-in driveway solved almost entirely, to somewhat borrow a line from Blanche in A Streetcar Named Desire, by the literal kindness of partial-to-complete strangers.

It was #GivingTuesday when all of this went down, but I know better than to assume that all these people came together independently to give us a hand because of a hashtag. For all the negatives we tend to focus on, it’s experiences like this that remind me that people are generally good and generally want to do good things for other people when they can. And granted, for every Dave Delaney running a food pantry or coat drive out of their businesses, there are stories like this for plenty of businesses like what Alexander’s did for us every day (and I am not recommending that you call them up for free engine support, but I appreciate their gesture), and countless individuals giving their time and energy to make life better in their communities.

No one should feel ashamed for not doing enough, or not having the capacity or ability to do what they can. But maybe the holidays aren’t a struggle for you, and you have an hour to bring coffee to an old friend. Or maybe you have a neighbor who is always busy and could use a hand in the next snowstorm. Or, really, it could just be someone you know who needs to be reminded that they’re awesome – or maybe they don’t need to be reminded, but you can tell them anyway.

A little kindness goes a long way, and not only during the Christmas season. I appreciate those who helped us out last week, and I hope I can pay it forward somehow in the next few weeks, if not for the rest of my time.