Because sometimes adults build complicated explanations around truths that children understand immediately.
Kindness does not require someone to speak the way you speak.
Learn the way you learn.
Move the way you move.
Remember things the way you remember them.
Or experience the world exactly the way you do.
People understand kindness in a thousand different ways.
In patience.
In inclusion.
In food placed quietly on a table.
In someone saving you a seat.
In an apology given without excuses.
In being invited instead of hidden.
In somebody noticing the thing everyone else walked past.
Caleb was wrong to skip his lunches.
I still tell him that.
He knows.
But he was right about one thing from the very beginning.
Sophie understood.
She understood when he sat beside her stroller.
She understood the dandelions.
She understood the ridiculous faces.
She understood the red dress.
And on the day she turned two, when she grabbed that skirt in both little hands and spun in a circle until the whole backyard filled with laughter…
