Smiles

As I pulled into the parking lot, there she was, slowly ambling along with head bowed to the pavement, looking up only occasionally to watch for traffic. It was February in our frozen mile-high city, and this dear old soul was dressed for spring in her thin sweater worn over a cotton dress. Heavy brown stockings covered spindly legs, while her oversized oxfords flip-flopped along the pavement. She was making her way into the Salvation Army Thrift Store.

I retreated from my truck to tell the yardman he could unload my latest offering for the thrift store. Upon entering the store, my fellow volunteers surrounded me like bees to honey. "Kath, did you by any chance bring us a good quilt?"

The dear old lady, who was probably younger than me, but looked older than Methuselah, wandered about the shop touching and feeling the neatly hung and folded goods. She mumbled, and with a sigh and bright smile, shook her head deciding all was too expensive for her meager budget.

"Jiminy Crickets, Kath," whispered one of the clerks as he saw what I carried. "Are you sure you want to give us your down comforter? I'll lay you odds it will be snapped up by day's end!"

"I have several. This one is for a twin size bed," I said, then murmured across the counter, "I want you to price it in her favor."

"You've got it lady, we'll see to it that she heads home with your goose feathers!"

*   *   *   *   *

I pondered the significance of the old woman's big smile, and wondered for a brief moment if a tortured soul was behind it, or if was a genuine reflection of goodness and cheer. I hoped it was the latter.

There are persons so radiant, so genial, so loving and pleasurable, that you feel their personalities light up a room. Certain people you can hardly wait to see again and again. As I drove home my thoughts drifted to a recent encounter with such a soul. An old friend had rushed after me down a Wal-Mart aisle with her wigged coiffeur comically askance and a portable oxygen tank in her basket.

"Kath, wait up a minute."

We hugged, so pleased at seeing one another after a long absence. But then I felt my eyes welling up on hearing she was battling pancreatic cancer. "Oh, but no, Kath, you mustn't feel badly for me," she said while smiling broadly and insisting she had every intention of beating the death knell. We hugged again, and I loathed to see her go, for this was a rare being in my long list of life's treasures. I took a page from her book and smiled back with mouth upturned and a silent prayer that she would truly put the good Lord off for a while yet.

*   *   *   *   *

Smiling can express our pleasure and disguise our pain. Cheerful people are like sunbeams, radiating cheer in their presence. No one has a right to add to the sorrows of the world by spilling gloom and doom around. Every person creates a certain aura, and our personalities radiate whatever light we shed. It is perhaps one of the most valuable gifts we can bestow upon others, a cheerful spirit at all times, even when we're hurting inside. Hearts that smile give wings to the feet, a kick to the legs, a swing to the arms, and vitality to every motion.

I recently spent the better part of my morning keeping a young plumber company in the confines of my dreary basement while he installed a new hot water tank. "Stay and talk to me about this neat place where you've lived so long."

"You sure are a cheerful guy," I commented as he went about his work smiling in between whistling.

"Well, I'll tell ya, Kath – and I hope you don't mind my calling you by your first name – my fiancée died two months ago of a sudden brain embolism. She was just 31, the light of my life, my bride-to-be, and she was gone so quickly that I went into shock and took time off work. Then I meet someone like yourself who is widowed after 53 years and I enjoy your cheerful ways and how you and your cute pup manage your new way of life. I think there must be many years of new life for me as well and then maybe I'll smile and whistle at the same time."

Mirth is God's medicine. Everybody ought to bathe in it. So put on the gift of a smile, like the old woman who now owns my quilt, the cancer patient so full of faith, and the plumber who found reasons to smile despite his still raw grief.

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