I was surprised and delighted when Nancy called me to recommend someone to do child-care in my home. It was 1979, we had just moved to a new town in Western Maryland, and circumstances made it necessary for me to go back to work quickly. It broke my heart to have to leave my baby with someone else, so I was anxious to find the exact match for our family. I didn’t know her very well, but Nancy was a close friend of an older neighbor and she knew of my circumstances. “Ann is wonderful,” she said on the phone, “a very caring and trustworthy woman. You’ll love her.” As I interviewed Ann later that day I found her to be a gentle person. She had grown children of her own and her 30 year job at a nearby clothing factory had suddenly ended. “Factory’s been shut down—bought out. I hear they’re going to tear it down, “ she told me. Very quickly she became part of the family. She cared for my daughter and even made some of her baby clothes. I would sometimes help out tutoring her grandsons with their schoolwork. One day a long time after she started, she came to the house looking very tired. She laughed, “A bunch of us was up all night at Hilda’s house making baskets last night.” When I asked her about this she told me the whole story: Nancy and her husband James had run the clothing factory for 30 years. When the out-of-town owners sold it, they gave only a two-week notice. People needed jobs and the small communities in that part of Maryland did not have any opportunities. Most of the workers were older and they had no chance for income. Nancy and James were devastated. Even though they also, both in their mid-sixties, would lose everything, they set out on a plan. They worked tirelessly to find employment for all 54 workers at the plant. Day in and day out they called, they visited, and they wrote everyone they knew scouring the area for jobs until everyone was placed. “Wow!” I said, “That’s how you came to us!” I continued, “But the baskets…?” “Well, you see,” she began, “every year for all the time we worked there at the factory, Nancy and James made us Christmas baskets . They knew we weren’t making much money and it was a tight time—you know with holidays and kids and all. So they’d buy us things we could use. See, we knew they were pretty strapped too. They had three kids and the factory wasn’t paying them enough to buy their own house, but still they figured out how to give us things to make our lives better. And now—Well now they’re really low —no money coming in and James has bad, bad lungs. So, it’s our turn to do for them. A bunch of us all get together every week and make baskets. Every day someone leaves one on their front porch in the middle of the night.” I listened, mesmerized by this story. Suddenly, as I realized I had to get to work quickly, Ann smiled, picked up my crying baby girl from her crib, gently soothed her and said, “We figure that we all got to help each other in this world, right? We all got to do what we can with what we got. We’re all in this together.” Even after my daughter had grown and our family moved to New Jersey, Ann and I remained long-distance friends. One day about 10 years ago during a particularly sad time in my life a box arrived in the mail. No return address. I opened it. There, placed gently nest-like within scraps of fabric, was a basket filled with homemade cookies and breads. The note said: “We are all in this world together. Today it’s my turn to do for you.”
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