Evelyn

"Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if thou hast understanding" - Job, 38:4

There was a woman named Evelyn who cared for me when I was an infant - only for a few months. When I was born, my father was working and going to nightschool to finish his high school degree, and my mother was finishing her last year of college. By the time I was about a year old, we had moved away to Amherst where my father started college. Evelyn saw me only a few times after that. But until I was 35 years old, I always received a birthday card from Waltham, Mass, with the signature line, "Love, Your old babysitter, Evelyn."

It wasn't until I was in my late twenties that I began to reciprocate. I started sending her birthday cards and even occasional notes with pictures of my own children. She loved them and would write back immediately. But then I would usually wait months before responding again - or until one of our birthdays came around again.

When I received the birthday card I had sent her with the words, "deceased" scrawled across the address, it was hard to believe. I hadn't seen Evelyn in more than 20 years, but the fact that a birthday card wouldn't come the next May - it seemed almost unthinkable. It was one of the forces of nature. With winter comes snow, with spring, rain and flowers, and a birthday card.

I don't think I appreciated how lucky I was to have this bond with someone almost a stranger until many years later. How do you explain it? You could argue that Evelyn was a lonely old woman living in a second floor walk-up in a decrepit building and had nothing better to do. Perhaps. Perhaps it was more about her happiness than mine that she sent those cards year after year. It certainly was not because I was particularly worthy. I hadn't earned that love. But the fact is, she touched me and made me believe that there are random acts of goodness in this universe that we sometimes take for granted, that complement the cruelties and excesses that much more often come to play center to our stories.

When my birthday comes around each year now I think of Evelyn, each year making sure to get to the grocery store and buy a card for the baby she had held and cared for all those years ago. She didn't know the man I had become, except by occasional notes and pictures. I don't know that these would have made much difference to her. What I believe she thought she knew was the core of me - all the rest was just trappings. The ones we come to love - the ones that love us - it never ceases to amaze me how random this is. And to be loved for your core - it's a thing that defies understanding. A thing that comes only a few times in life, if at all.