Our daughter-in-law wasn’t feeling well, so the grandsons and I decided to pick up a few groceries. It was an after-school run, and the store was packed. As we headed to the check-out line, someone tapped me on the shoulder.

The woman’s lightly gray hair framed a friendly face, and a timid smile was on her face. She was holding something out to me.

“Here,” she said, extending a gift card closer to me. “I’d like to give you this.”

I looked and saw she had a gift card for the grocery store.

“Oh, I couldn’t take this,” I told her, indicating she should keep the card.

She smiled again and extended the card again.

“I’m paying it forward,” she said. “Somebody did something nice for me, and I’m putting good out into the universe.”

It was obvious she wasn’t going to let me get away. The kindness and sincerity in her eyes surprised me. I’d never met or seen this woman before, and here she was, offering us a gift.

I took the card, stammering a thanks. My grandsons looked at the two of us, not sure what was happening.

Before she walked away, she said something.

“Now it’s your turn,” she said. “Pay it forward.”

These kinds of encounters are things we read about in books or see in movies, not real life. People have been kind to me hundreds of times, but something about this woman touched me.

She wasn’t dressed like someone with money. More like a retiree who’d put in her years of service to the world. If anyone should be getting a gift card, it was her.

Before I could argue any more, she was lost in the crowd.

The boys couldn’t believe a total stranger would give us a gift card. The clerk said it was for $50, and I was even more amazed. That’s a lot of money to just give away to a stranger, and I kept hearing her voice – pay it forward.

When we got back to my daughter-in-law’s house, the boys were excited to tell their mom about the incident. I gave her the gift card so she could use it for a last-minute store run, an often occurrence with five children.

But simply giving the card to my daughter-in-law wasn’t enough. Over the next few days, I kept my eyes open for an opportunity to do something nice for someone.

The next time I was in the grocery store, a young family was two carts in front of me. The woman was holding a toddler, and the man was picking up and putting down items on the conveyer belt.

They were looking through their groceries, deciding what to put back. They had a government card, and the card only covered certain brands of food. Some of the items they picked up weren’t covered.

The items on the belt were staples for a young family – milk, bread, cereal, diapers. I waited for a second to see if the person in front of me was going to do anything, but he didn’t. When I saw the mom hand back the milk, I stepped around the guy in front of me.

“I’ll pay for whatever’s not covered by the card,” I quietly told the clerk.

The mom thanked me, and the family got all they’d picked out and left. The clerk thanked me for what I’d done, but I told her the thanks didn’t belong to me. The thanks belonged to a gray-haired lady who extended a kindness to me along with a promise to pay it forward.

I gave the same challenge to the clerk. Kindness doesn’t have to be money. It can be calling someone who’s home alone, letting someone merge into traffic in front of you or smiling at someone who’s having a tough day.

There’s no way that one act in the grocery store fulfills my obligation to the universe. I’m keeping my eyes open for opportunities, and perhaps that’s what the woman in the store meant.

Pay it forward isn’t a one-stop promise. It’s a lifelong commitment.

 

        This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.