Helping Old Ladies Cross the Street

BOILING STONES
(Things a man can do in the kitchen)
© February 9, 2009
By: George O. Martin, Jr.

Helping Old Ladies Cross the Street

When I was a young fellow of ten or eleven my mother taught me how to be polite to the ladies. She instructed me to open doors for them, carry packages for them, and even offer them my seat when there was none other available. She taught me well, too, because I still offer the same courtesies today as a matter of habit, and as a matter of what just seems to be the right thing to do.
She also taught me to extend the same politeness to older people. They deserved my respect, she would say, and so I respected them and gave them the same good manners. It made sense somehow that I should do those things; and the smiles I received in response made it worthwhile, also.
It was just a natural progression for my juvenile mind that if there was a lady who needed help it only stood to reason that if it were an older lady my efforts were to be doubled. So, from that perspective I would, on occasion, help an old lady cross the street, over the curb, up the stairs, into the car, or any other situation where an extra amount of support would be appreciated. It was just what my mother taught me to do. So, when a particular older lady asked me a favor last week I was more than happy to say yes. She asked me if I would help her move across the street. My mother would have been proud of my willingness.
But, I should have known better. Not that my mother was wrong; no, I can’t believe that; but because I had helped this same lady move on three previous occasions, and each time I rendered assistance there was more stuff to move. The first time it was a matter of a few things and several boxes. The second time there was a lot more matter, plus furniture, and many boxes. By the third time there were boxes she had not unpacked from the second move, furniture she had purchased in addition to what we had moved in previously, and a myriad of new stuff she had acquired since that time.
I now know what an exponential progression means, but I didn’t have the courage to refuse the old lady’s request for assistance. My mother’s ghost just wouldn’t let me. So I helped her move across the street. Actually I helped her move across the street, down the alley and around the corner from where she had lived. It was a bit more of a transport than I expected; and this was the fourth and the largest amount of stuff I had ever seen to be moved in my life!
This petite woman of some eight decades I am sure, had never discarded any of the things she had purchased in the past seven decades, and she was a good customer of every discount store she ever entered. I am certain the person who had her trash service contract smiled whenever he received her check, because there was never anything in her trash container. She kept everything; and I had agreed to move her, and that everything, across the street, and it was half again as much as I had moved the time before.
She had packed for several days before the day of the move; and she had arranged for several people to help. There was to be daughter and friends, grand-daughters and husbands. I even brought my own lady and two of my children.
Simple I thought. It will be all packed, and with all those people we will have the lady across the street in jig time. That is what I thought. What I found was curtains that needed to be taken down beds that need to be dismantled, boxes that needed to be filled, appliances to be unplugged, and not another mortal in sight, except the three I had brought with me, and a good friend who had volunteered to help. The lady herself was at the new house, across the street.
There was nothing to do but start carrying and loading, and transporting what we could, and we did. Load after load, box after box, and stuff after stuff was taken until all that we could handle with our small vehicles was delivered, and placed around the old woman across the street. She was sitting in her new kitchen emptying all the boxes we had brought.
We decided to have some lunch with her, and just as we opened all the food, and were ready to eat it, everyone else she had asked to help arrived, with loads of furniture to unload, and empty stomachs to fill. But we all helped, and we all ate, and we all celebrated a first meal in a new house.
There were more things and much stuff yet to be brought across the street, but the little lady was there and she was beginning the chore of making the place her own. She directed that to go there, and this to go in that room, the desk to go in the sunroom, and the canned goods to go into that closet. Then I saw her sit back on her chair, and in a wistful way brush away a tear, and say, “I know where every last thing will go except for the memories I left in the old house across the street.”