December Kindness

I finished out our Year of Kindness this week by baking cookies for the local nursing home.  It was a very economical project since I just bought the tubes of cookies from the store (on sale!).  The baking & decorating was the most time-consuming and that only took a little more than an hour.  Even during the busy holiday season it takes very little to give some kindness to others.  I made chocolate chip & sugar cookies and dropped them off at St. Mary's at Asbury Ridge ( http://www.stmaryshome.org/ ) on Saturday.  It has a variety of different facilities including assisted living and an Alzheimer's facility.  I dropped off the cookies at the front desk and the secretary was so confused at first.  I had to explain three times that they weren't for anyone in particular; that I was just dropping them off for the holiday....Leave them out for whoever...Give them to someone who doesn't get any visitors, etc.  It took a while for it to sink in and she just kept saying "oh!" 

It made me feel good to be able to do it, but it would have felt even better if she could have responded, "I'll put them with all the other donated cookies!"  I didn't think that our December kindness was that out-of-the-ordinary, but the secretary's response made me feel like it was unique-but not in the good way.  It was a very low maintenance type of kindness, but a worthwhile one.