Day 6: Red Rover, Red Rover, Send Tom on Over.

Every day since I started my 31 Days of Kindness, I have been overwhelmed with an outpouring of encouragement, support and kind words shared about my brother.  Yesterday alone I received several messages reiterating what I have always know about Adam, that he was a kind hearted boy, willing to step over the typical social lines in high school, in order to befriend others.  

He did this in the hallways of his school, on the soccer field or the wrestling mat.  He was a hardworking athlete and genuinely loved being part of a team.  His best friends were his teammates, and on the night he was killed, he and his co-captain, were featured in the newspaper for bringing home such a big victory.

The following day, when news of his death had spread, that same picture again made the front page of the paper... but with a very different headline.  

Seeing that picture is bittersweet.  It brings my family joy to see Adam so full of life and excitement in the victory, and it breaks our hearts knowing that these moments were among his last.  

I want to remember Adam this way.  As an athlete.  Healthy, fast, strong.  

For Day 6, I wanted to honor Adam the athlete.  We planned to somehow attach a $5 gift card to the netting of a soccer goal at the varsity field near our house.  The plan was solid, except by the time we got to the field it was after dark and the field was gated and locked.

I insisted/forced Tom to go through with the plan... even though I am pretty sure this was the first time he's ever broken a rule.  But, he mumbled something about being like Robinhood and before I knew it, he was climbing a fence.  He used a tie-wrap to quickly attach the gift card to the net, in just a bit of a panic, as is the case in most first-time B&E cases.  But, it was for the sake of kindness that he put his clean criminal history on the line.  And there you have it, Day 6.

*In the unexpected case that the sirens that passed us moments after we left the field were actually coming after us, we would like to say that the above story is purely anecdotal and is not even true in the slightest.  The photographs may not be used to prove otherwise and/or prosecute us because they have been photoshopped and also we plead the fifth and if necessary, invoke the pirate rule, parlay, as made famous by Captain Jack Sparrow in the Pirates of the Carribean.

Dancing with the Least of These

I fell asleep mid-conversation last night before I ha a chance to post about Day 4, so today will be a b.o.g.o. event... And I think it will be worth the wait.

Day Four: I read on Facebook that some of our very best friends got their pumkins smashed before they even had a chance to carve them.  Paul and Erica, and their three little ones, Macey, Justus and O-Baby O-Theo (it's really just Theo, but that is what London calls him, for no reason whatsoever) were our first friends when we moved to Rochester.  We have gone through so much together, all of the highs and lows of the past six years were spent with this amazing family.

Erica is a quiet servant, she hears of a need, and will quietly try to help.  She sees something that reminds her of someone, and she will buy it and save it for the perfect time. When I saw her post about the kids being bummed... Day Four was easy.

Tom and I were able to deliver new pumkins to the doorstep before the kids got home from school, and they seemed pretty excited. 

Miss Macey

 

Justus

And of course, O-Baby O-Theo

The good news is that purchasing these pumpkins will no longer stress Macey in the financial sense.. So hopefully she can take the weekend off from her home-based business.

For Day Five, it was sort of a potpourri of kindness.  I gave apples to some friends, including our hard working garbage man.  He was really, really surprised and thankful.  

In addition to the apples, I spent an hour and a half taking to my elderly neighbor about old World War II stories.  He told me what the weather was like during the battle of the bulge, and described what he saw at Buchenwald when they liberated Jewish and Polish prisoners, including the mentally ill that we're forced to brutally kill other Jews before they were sent to the crematorium.

The stories were horrific.  And being around Mr. Al, in General is quite challenging.  But, everyone needs to tell their story and he is no exception.  

For my last kindness of the day, I am going to share a special gift with the greater Buffallo, NY region.  The gift of my sweet dance moves.  

Adam always loved to dance, and yesterday an old aquaintence of his shared a beautiful story with me that I had never heard.  She wrote this:

When I was 15, I went to the freshman dance in the cafeteria in the Jr High. I was awkward and very shy. I spent most of the evening hiding in the bathroom and hoping it would just be over. I ended up going out to the dance floor. I didn't know Adam, but I recognized him. He was there all by himself. Amazing! A 14 year old boy at a dance by himself! ( I went with a group of girl friends). I asked if he wanted to dance. He said sure! Before we got a chance, my friend cut in. It was funny the first time, but she did it repeatedly all night long and I never did get to dance with this nice boy. Well, as I was walking down the hall after the dance, I met up with Adam. My friend was no where in sight. I mentioned that to him, just as a joke. He stopped right there and we danced! Just for a few moments. No music, no cafeteria, who cares who saw.

What a special special brother you have! I don't know of any boy that age that would do such a sweet thing. I was always taught that there are angels on earth. I have repeated this story to people many times and there is no doubt in my mind that he was an angel.

That, my friends, was who my brother was.  He didn't care if you were the garbage man, the oldest, grumpiest man alive, or the shyest girl in school... He was a kind and loving friend to all.  So, tonight, I shall dance.  My limbs will flail in directions that don't make any sense, and I will forcefully lead the conga line with participants that are barely willing.  I will do it with great joy, knowing the from heaven, my brother is not dancing alone, but he is getting down with his Heavenly Father and that is one party that just don't stop.

Day 3: Do Not Leave Your Books Unattended

For those of you just joining us, welcome, here is your homework: Day 1 and Day 2.  Now that we are all on the same page, there is something you should probably know... especially if you are planning to join in on all the kindness.  Here it is: kindness scares people.  Now, I'm not saying people don't appreciate acts of kindness, and I would certainly never discourage the kindness!  I am simply stating a fact.  And the fact is that people are very skeptical of random kindnesses.  Last year, I had a whole group of people waiting for a bus reject my donut holes (which were still sealed in a store bought package, mind you, so the rejection was not a sanitary decision which I could have understood and appreciated).  They looked at me like I was trying to give them donut holes laced with meth.  Or hair.

Anyways, people do not trust a gal just handing out perfectly sanitary breakfast pastries, it's just something we all need to accept.  It makes it awkward, sure, but it also makes it even better when someone is blessed by somebody with no strings attached, and slowly they realize that it is not a hidden camera show, or a trap of some sort, but it is, in fact... kindness.

That being said, today's act of kindness was a little on the awkward side.  Now, you newer readers may not know this but my husband was laid off about 3 months ago, and I make almost zero dollars a year, and we have five children, so it goes without saying that we have had to tighten our belt a little.  And by a little, I mean we ate our belt for dinner because we are so poor.  Okay, that was maybe a touch dramatic.  In reality, we are fine.  We're being very frugal and wise and we are learning to go without everything but the necessities, and that is really hard, but very good.  However, I am going to need you to keep all this in mind this month because my acts of service need to cost little to NO money.  I already blew my budget on sugar-free candies for the boys, so it's gotta be Random Acts of Cheapness from here on out.  Enter Day 3.

I love to read, and obviously, I love to write.  I still remember my brother giving me To Kill a Mockingbird, which remains to this day, my favorite book of all time.  Adam was also a voracious reader, and an excellent writer.  He received an award for an essay he wrote on tolerance, and he was the editor-in-chief of an award-winning school newspaper, and if I remember correctly... he had a brief stint in high school being pen-pals with famous author, Ken Follett.

A love for reading and writing is one of my favorite ways that I feel similar to Adam.  So, it seemed fitting (and free) to take some books from my own collection and give them away.  I decided to leave them around, on park benches, at playgrounds, on the gas pump.  I left little notes, like these, so that people knew that someone hadn't just left it behind on accident.

Here's how it got awkward.  If you walk up to a playground, without any children, you already seem like there is at least a chance that you are a registered sex offender.  And with that little cloud of suspicion already around you, one might think it unwise to put an item on a park bench and then slowly leave without saying anything.  Seriously, in hindsight, it was a very terroristy thing to do.  If I was pushing my kid on the swings and I saw that happen, I would definitely think that the book was a small bomb that had been marinating in anthrax.

Fortunately nobody called the bio-terrorist unit, and that's good enough for me.  I am just happy that I could share with some strangers the love of books, and hopefully it will bring a little joy into someone's day and make them fall in love with reading the way Adam and I did.  And if that dream is a little too lofty, at least nobody got anthrax, which is a win for everyone.

Forever Seventeen

I woke up this morning with an act of kindness planned for day two.  I decided to put that plan on hold when I received this picture.

Along with so many of my fantastic friends and family members, my friend Brandi and her husband Danny have committed to participating in our challenge this month.  Brandi works at a boarding school on the north shore of Boston that is specifically for students with dyslexia who come from all over the world. Brandi sent me a message this morning saying that after reading my post from Day One she had been feeling very emotional when her reading students came in and she was struck by the fact that each of her students was, in fact, a 17 year old boy.  

Like Adam, one of these boys is a soccer player who was telling Brandi about his game last night. The realization of these kids' ages and interests prompted a desire to share Adam's story with her students.  As the boys listened to her tell them about how a young life, so similar to their own, was cut short in the blink of an eye, they too were moved with emotion.  To Brandi's surprise, the boys didn't just listen, but they responded... by agreeing to join in with us this month, intentionally committing 31 acts of kindness for the 31 days of October.

I don't know if this will make any sense to anyone... but the fact that there are a couple of 17 year old kids running around Boston, blessing people with kindness is truly the most hilarious and healing image in my mind!  My heart is so full, and it was such a blessing to be able to call my mom this morning and let her know that her son is still impacting lives for good.  What that does for a mama who has lost her son... they don't realize it, but that was their first act of kindness.

So, for day two, my new favorite 17 year old boys are gettin' candy.  

I have zero in common with 17 year old boys (except maybe body type, if they're gangly and awkward)

so I wasn't sure what to send them.  I heard that any kind of junk food is a good idea, so I filled a box with all things high fructose corn syrup.  *If any of you boys have a peanut allergy, spoiler alert, this is not going to go well for you.  I also threw in an unnecessary amount of sugar-free hard candies, which are essentially garbage, but are something I often remember Adam eating.  As a wrestler always trying to "make weight," he would eat those disgusting candies all the time, and get ridiculously upset if... sayyyy... someone like a little sister hid all those candies for no particular reason.

I included a letter thanking them, and telling them a little more about my brother and his candies, and how much this means to our family that my brother's "peers" would be involved in honoring his memory, because Adam is, after all, forever seventeen.

Day 1: Life.

I can't believe that it has already been a full year since I told the story about my brother, Adam.  I started with the story of his death, and spent the rest of the month trying to share and honor the story his life.  And here I am again.  Day one.

Below is the original post, because I think it is important to start at the beginning, and because I want all the new readers to understand why I am spending another October choosing to celebrate and honor life, rather than being consumed by death...

In loving memory of my big brother. 

--

I am going to tell you a story.

I haven't done this before, told this story, so detailed and so publicly.  But, I am going to try something big this month, and I think I need to tell this story in order to do it well.  So, here goes nothin...

It was Halloween night many years ago, and my 17 year old brother, Adam H. Provencal, was driving home from the Regional Championship Soccer game.  He was a senior in high school and the captain of the soccer team, and this victory was worth celebrating, and it was news worth spreading for our small Michigan town.

When my brother (and his friend Mike) were driving home and passed some of their friends out playing some harmless Halloween pranks, it was the perfect time to spread the news.  So Adam pulled the car over and was telling his friends about the big victory.  I have no idea what my brother was thinking or feeling in that moment but, my guess, is freedom.  I imagine a boy - crazy about sports, working so hard to maintain his 4.0 GPA in mostly advanced placement classes, editor-in-chief of the nationally recognized school paper, and all-around nice guy - and the pressure that that brings on a kid.  I imagine him in this moment, and the hard work (for now) is done and has paid off with a regional championship.  And he's free.  He is young and free, and he wants to tell to his friends.

So, he pulls over and he and his friends are joking around and talking and hanging out, and they are young and free in this moment.

The whimsical youth of the moment ends when a homeowner comes out and is irate about the pranks and, though my brother had not been involved in them, he had the car and perhaps that made him seem to be the ringleader somehow.  I don't really know if that was why Adam felt the need to go to the door or not, but he did.  He decided he would walk up to the door, to apologize for being there and to offer to clean up the toilet paper in the yard, and he no longer felt young and free.  He was probably terrified that he was going to get in trouble.  So, he dutifully walked up to the man's door and knocked twice.

The man did not open the door and hear him out, he did not yell at Adam to leave, he did not call the police. When my 17 year old brother knocked on the door that night to have a hard conversation, he had a baby face and scrawny limbs and braces in his mouth.  And when Adam knocked twice on that door, the man gave no warning before he pulled the trigger of his shotgun, sending one, single bullet through the small window of his front door.

One bullet.

One bullet changed many lives, some lives even devastated.  But only one life was ended.  My only brother, my parents only son, my hero, my friend... the only person strong enough to jump on a trampoline with me on his shoulders, and the boy who led me to Christ, and taught me to dance like M.C. Hammer, and to be funny enough to joke my way out of trouble.  He was gone.

His murderer was in and then out of jail after only two years, for a boy's life taken in a rage over some harmless pranks.

Needless to say, when October rolls around I get stuck.  It is almost like my body involuntarily braces for a trauma.  The crisp fall air, the smell of leaves and bonfires... they are all beautiful reminders of fall, and nightmarish triggers that put my physical and emotional self on high alert, tragedy-ready.

So, here we are, heading into the 31 days of October, and I am 31 years old... outliving my big brother by 14 years.  I need to do something.  I need to be productive and I need to spend these 31 days focusing outwardly, or I will implode with my seasonal misery and depression.  So, I accepted a challenge, a plan designed to get out of my head and focus on other people.  31 days of kindness toward others.

I have no idea what this 31 day challenge is going to teach me.  And I have very little faith in my ability to stick with this.  So, this is me going on public record promising to let these next 31 days not be all about me, and all about memories and sadness and lost life.  Rather, I want to commit myself to honor all the good Adam would have done if his life had not been cut short.  I wanted to be just like him when I grew up.  Well, here is my chance... 31 is pretty grown up, so here goes nothing.

--

For my first act of kindness this year, I created and donated some custom-made hair pieces and costume pieces to a local ballet ministry appropriately named "The Life Ballet," which shares a message of life and healing to millions of men and women who suffer in silence in the aftermath of having chosen to have an abortion.  

The Life Ballet was written and created by Sandy Arena, who shares her personal story of having had two abortions herself, and has since devoted her life to helping women recover from the devastating effects many women experience after having an abortion.  Sandy and her amazing family have poured themselves into a mission that does not judge or condemn women for their choice but, rather, helps them find freedom, forgiveness and healing.

Being able to support Sandy and the dancers in The Life Ballet is kind of a perfect day one, because this month of kindness is about the same thing... finding freedom, forgiveness and healing.