Ava was surprised the other day when she heard that we can bake things with pumpkin.  (Clearly I’m still coming out of hibernation after having the twins, just starting to make a full week of dinners over here.)

BUT I am excited about baking again, it satisfies Ava’s love of making things and I love the opportunity it gives us to give some away, to have an easy excuse to go visit people.

We made pumpkin chocolate chip cookies for the first time the other day. I promised the kids that we’d get outside and ride bikes, and as the last of the cookies finished and the sun began to wane, we quickly dropped some off to the lady a few doors down that let us borrow her ground cloves.

As the kids geared up to head out the door again, I thought about how this may be the best time to offer them to someone else, so I stood by the door wondering WHO to bring them to.

I quickly thought of the elderly man a few floors above us, he lost his wife to cancer just the week before.

I had never met him, but I cared about him. I put a few on a plate and wrapped them up, wrote a note at Ava’s request and ran out to meet the other kids already playing in the hallway.

I imagined he might have family there, might be out somewhere, or might not care for visitors. Maybe he was doing just fine, we could just drop them off real quick.

He didn’t have family there, or visitors. A pile of funeral programs and two vases of flowers still sat on his table. He greeted us gratefully, responded that he was “hanging in there,” and didn’t seem to mind the kids hanging on my legs as we talked.  He told me about his family, showed me a poem his autistic granddaughter wrote for him, and spoke of his last days with his wife with tears in his eyes. We talked for thirty minutes in his doorway, he mostly talked and I mostly listened, feeling my own tears and wishing I knew a way to better comfort him. Another lady down the hall toted my kids back and forth in her wagon until she got tired and Thea had to go potty.

I mentioned we’d better go home to the bathroom and he offered we use his. So we went inside and talked some more.

When we turned to leave, he looked down at the cookies and the funeral pamphlets next to them, his mouth pressed to keep back the tears.

I felt for him.

I wondered then, hesitant to leave him, perhaps people aren’t as “taken care of” as we think.

Are we ever “taken care of?”

I’m learning just how much we are all in need.

It’s inspiring to me the way God weaves our paths with others, the ones we need and who need us. When we are open to it, we see how we can reach out in simple ways. Ways for Him, and ways that take care of us both.

There’s a powerful feeling that comes when we take care of each other, when we try where we can, even when we’re not sure it’s needed or not sure we know how.

I imagine we both feel it. It’s God’s love we’re really sharing. We learn how to love more like Him and we get to feel His love because of that. Because we try. And that makes all the difference. #mamanotes