So to speak: The gift of giving

The heart of any community lies in its ability to protect its own. My mother learned that valuable lesson many years ago and she taught us to accept those who have nowhere to turn to. When I was growing up, people wandered in and out of our house on a regular basis. Some sought temporary shelters while others dropped in unexpectedly for a meal.
Most of them were faces that I could not put names to. But they were all welcomed with equal grace and dignity irrespective of their background or inclination. They were also received unreservedly, and I don’t remember a moment that my mother ever complained about hosting them.
I remember with particular fondness an old gentleman, with a bad stammer but a kind face, who had a permanent abode in our spacious attic. Too old to come down, he would shout and try to put together a sentence fifty feet above me, and I would patiently decipher the badly strewn words. It would usually be ‘get me sugar’ or ‘fetch me a glass of water’.
Our guests were never a burden to the already ten mouths to feed. Once I talked to my mother about those days and how she felt then.
“They were the reasons that, even though we had limited resources of our own, we seem to live on the edge of prosperity,” she told me.
God’s bounty is not limited to wealth but in sharing with what little you have. When it came to that, my mother did it in a big way. Being a middle son, I was often the bearer of the salvation flag, having to deliver food on foot to distant poverty-stricken relatives every afternoon. I remember hating it because it deprived me of my free time but knew that I was part of an important chain that held people together. It is a lesson that I carry with me now and try to instil in my children.
Habits die hard. Years later, my mother still felt the urge of stretching a hand to others. Although elderly and frail, the torch of compassion was still burning bright inside her. There was more to her — much more — than a moment of deep gratification of saying those simple words she always said, ‘You are welcome here’. They needed to know that she was doing the right thing without expecting a reward.
We have flown the well-feathered nest a long time ago to build our own. But her home was always a place of clarity and uprightness where others call it home, too. My mother ran an equivalent of a small scale Salvation Army whose soldiers are primarily made of her five children and ten or so nephews. If she called us for a meeting in her home, then we know that somewhere, someone needed help. We would gather dutifully and after the usual protest, we would give in, and start to chip in something for the good cause. She trained all of us to look beyond the value of money for the sake of those who have little or nothing.
“You should always stick together,” she said, “for yourselves and for others.”
It is an axiom that we have heard a countless times. Reaching out for others was more than a way of life for her. It was the very air she breathed and lived in and which she found plenty in supply. Years has passed now since then but her legacy still glows deep inside all of us.