Dear editor:

So much in life is hum-drum, everyday, just normal, maybe boring.

A lot can be really bad, too.

But then something happens to shine a beautiful light on us humans and the essential love and goodness in us all.

And many times a penny has to drop before we fully appreciate what happened.

I reasoned that COVID-19 enforced “idleness” would be a good time to continue my slow process of “transferring” the accumulation of a lifetime to those who can make better use of it. That's better than dumping things, I believe.

I reason further that some of the things have value and that value is expressed by levying a small charge for them. This “reasoning” seems to have at least some merit, for both the “Free Stuff” and “Collectibles” I have put on Kijiji are snapped up quite avidly.

I think people have time on their hands and free stuff defies pandemics. We are all careful interacting at the prescribed “distance” in my “place of offering,” my garage, basically, and we all are happy to have even a little human personal interaction.

But as well as the free stuff, numerous other “offerings” have also been snapped up, as it were.

Among these was a Singer Sewing Machine, Model #147, blue, in great shape, with a number of “accessories.”

I got an email (I am careful about using only emails on Kijiji) about the sewing machine from a woman who said she lived north of Barrie, almost a three-hour drive from my house.

I found that a bit unusual, so far away yet interested in coming down to see and perhaps to buy the sewing machine.

I tried to reassure her about the machine's condition by sending photos and even a video I did on my little camera of it actually running, and that seemed to satisfy her about coming down to get it.

She came, she saw, she was quite happy to give me the pittance I was asking for it. I put it in her SUV and she was off, back to north of Barrie.

And usually that is the end of such encounters.

But she sent an email of thanks, which was a whole additional world of wonder and love.

She had come all the way to get the machine from me for her Mum.

She had been looking for the exact machine that I had put on Kijiji, including model, colour and accessories, just like the one her Mum used to have.

She had been trying to get such a machine in time for Mother's Day and during the pandemic so her Mum could use her previous sewing skills for diversion, pleasure and maybe even practicality.

She hadn't told me any of this when she came here for the machine. I would have just given it to her. But in her email after gifting it to her Mum, she was so thrilled and happy at her Mum's pleasure that she included me in that happiness.

Somewhere I hope my mother is smiling at this anecdote – she was strong as a lion, kept her soft side well hidden, but like all of us, love nurtures.

Kaspar Pold

NOTL