[title subtitle=”words: Marla Cantrell
Images: Jeromy Price and courtesty Steph Gibson”][/title]
On January 28, 2014, Steph Gibson turned forty. Several things happened in the weeks leading up to her big day. She’d been on Pinterest, and she’d come across a few posts about random acts of kindness. There were lists of things you could do, simple things to brighten someone else’s day, and the lists sparked something in Steph. She started thinking about her husband, who was likely struggling with a plan to make her birthday spectacular. What pressure, she thought, for this man she loved so much.
Then she read a novel called Wonder. The book touched her deeply, and two of the lines kept coming back to her. Our deeds are our monuments, and Whenever you have the choice of being right or being kind, be kind. “And that thought, choose to be kind, just stayed with me,” Steph says.
So she decided. She would perform forty acts of kindness, beginning on her birthday. Instead of expecting flowers and gifts, she would touch the lives of forty people, some she knew and others she’d never met.
This mother of four couldn’t believe how much fun the planning was. She, with the help of her sister, made a list. Steph’s oldest daughter printed labels that read: Today is my fortieth birthday. I’m celebrating by making other people smile. With the plan in place, Steph waited impatiently for the day to arrive.
“When we got up that morning, I put on some really loud dance music and my kids and I were singing and dancing, which wasn’t typical for me. And my husband walked in and smiled and shook his head. He said, ‘This is who I married.’ We were all so happy.”
Her first stop was supposed to be at a construction site near her Fort Smith, Arkansas home, where she’d seen the workers for weeks on end, huddled around a trash barrel turned outdoor fire pit, trying to get warm. She bought donuts and hand warmers they could put inside their gloves. It was before six in the morning when she arrived, but the workers had been sent to another job.
It was a small setback. Later in the day, she found another group of construction workers, equally cold, equally hungry, who were awed by Steph’s kindness. She and her sister went to Garrison Avenue, and dropped quarters in the parking meters in front of the water department. She went to Sonic and bought $5 gift cards that she then taped above several speakers, so that people pulling in to order would get a sweet surprise.
There is a man named Stanley who works at Chick-Fil-A, who always has a kind word, and Steph baked him one of her much-loved homemade, giant chocolate chip cookies and took it to him. She drove to the 188th Fighter Wing, where her husband works, and stopped at the security station. “They miss a lot of the fun stuff that goes on because they have to stay in the booth to make sure everything’s secure. So I made one of my giant cookies and took it to them.”
Steph found a Redbox machine, and taped a package of microwave popcorn to it, so that the next person renting a movie would see it. She went to Lin’s Garden Chinese Restaurant and left quarters in the candy machines. She bought lunch for a friend; she took more flowers to the hospital and left them at the nurses’ station, so they could find just the right patient to give them to. She delivered bouquets to two women from her church, because Steph said they do so much for others. But the most touching moment came when she arrived at the main branch of the Fort Smith Library for the children’s story hour. She carried forty balloons with her, and waited for the librarian to finish reading. She stepped into the room, handed out the balloons, and talked to them about Leslie Creekmore, a twenty-nine-year-old woman who worked at the library, was twenty weeks pregnant, and in January contracted the H1N1 strain of the flu that became double pneumonia. Leslie lost the baby, and was being treated at Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis. Her husband, Chris, never left her side. Sadly, Leslie passed away on February 10.
But on that day, Steph and thousands of others were praying for a miracle, and staying connected through a Facebook page called Love for Leslie. Steph and her children knew Leslie from their frequent visits to the library, and wanted to find a way to show this young woman how much she was cared about. So, after handing out the balloons, she asked the kids to remember to pray for her.
As the day rolled on, Steph found more and more people to help. Some of what she did was simple. She started a conversation with a woman in an elevator, and learned the woman had cancer, and needed someone to talk to. She opened doors for people. She found a woman pumping gas and handed her one of her Sonic gift cards. But there were other things, like making dinner for the firefighters stationed closest to her house that took time and planning and effort.
Steph thought about her oldest friends, women she’d met when she lived in Michigan, who were now scattered across the U.S. “Vegas, Utah, New Jersey, St. Louis. I sent them a message and told them I’d love for them to come to Arkansas but I knew they couldn’t. I said I wanted them to do acts of kindness in my honor on my birthday. So all through the day I’d get texts from them. My friend in New Jersey is awesome. She said she was doing the best she could, but the people there were skeptical and thought she was out to get them. She ended up giving a free Zumba lesson to one of her students, who was having a hard time.”
And so, all through the day and the following two days that it took Steph to finish her list, momentum built. She is humbled by what this project brought, and she understands what kindness means in a world where we’re so often bombarded by what is bad and what can’t be fixed and what brings us sorrow.
Her last act on her birthday was taking flowers to a neighbor who is widowed. “I didn’t really know Maxine. I’d only met her when I was out walking, and I’d stop and say hi. She’s the sweetest lady. I took my kids with me, so they could feel what it feels like to have someone smile so big and say, ‘You thought of me?’”
Looking back, her fortieth birthday was a kind of miracle. “I had a huge smile all day long. It was better than anything anybody could have done for me. Other than my wedding day, the birth of my children, and the day I was baptized into the church, it was the best day of my life.”
Steph is sitting near a window where sunshine pours in, and the light dances off her silver earrings. “One act of kindness paid forward can change people’s lives,” she says. “It can change how a community sees each other, and treats each other. The results are boundless.”
It is a great thing to ponder. If each of us reached out to someone every day and tried to make their journey a little brighter, who knows what a dazzling world this could be.
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Each month, DoSouth Magazine will feature the story of someone in our community who is making the world a better place. If you have someone you’d like to nominate for our Do Gooder Award, email editors@dosouthmagazine.com.
