Thursday, Nov. 13 was World Kindness Day — something I only learned when I picked up my 15-year-old daughter from school and saw the disappointment on her face.
Her school had arranged for therapy dogs to visit with students during gym and lunch. Since her lunch period was two classes after gym, she decided she could tolerate volleyball and save her excitement for later. But somewhere between serves and sandwiches, a voice crackled over the loudspeaker: the dogs had to cancel their lunchtime session. On the ride home, she and I agreed that every day should be Kindness Day, and that dogs — many of them — should be allowed to roam school hallways freely between each class period.
Earlier that morning, I had taken my husband to his six-month bloodwork appointment at the Harrison location of Memorial Sloan Kettering. We are a few years out from his prostatectomy and grateful that the check-ins grow further apart, but stepping into that waiting room always reminds me of what so many others are still enduring. In the middle of that charged, quiet, too-busy space, an employee pushed a cart through the room, offering iced tea, water, and snacks to anyone waiting. It wasn’t part of any official holiday. It was just a simple kindness in a place where physical and emotional pain feel almost tangible.
Later, on my way to school pickup, a police officer pulled me over in the cul-de-sac near our house. Apparently, the full stop I thought I had made was more of a polite pause. He approached my window, explained the infraction, took my license and registration, then returned to say he would give me only a warning. “You’re very kind,” I told him, fully aware that I had earned the ticket.
After school, my daughter and I stopped at the Starbucks drive-thru for the sugary pink drink she loves (and that I certainly over-indulge her in, more to appease than to be kind), this time crowned with sugar-cookie cold foam. At the window, she asked for a polar bear cake pop too — a round, sweet little face wearing a floppy hat. When we got home, she handed it to her younger brother. He didn’t say thank you, but he ate it happily, and she smiled.
In a week marked by the first snow squalls of the season and darkness settling in earlier each afternoon, these small gestures — some planned, some spontaneous — felt like tiny pockets of warmth. On World Kindness Day, it turned out the most meaningful kindnesses weren’t the official ones, but the quiet, everyday ones threaded through an ordinary Thursday.
