Hiking Mt. Houou

A Love Letter to Human Kindness

By Mariah Manny

The year is 2016. I am 21 years old. It is summer in Searcy, Arkansas, a place far from my hometown and everyone I know in Texas. One day I cry for the entire morning drive to my workplace, where I am a cashier for a small grocery store. When I arrive, I visit the store manager in her office. “I don’t think I can work today,” I tell her. “I’m struggling.” ***

Less than six months earlier, on January 24th of 2016, my father died of stomach cancer. A career truck driver who was injured several months after I was born, my father was the one who took care of me the most as a child, making my everyday meals and picking me up from school while my mother worked as a network engineer. A man who loved photography, he imparted a boundless appreciation for plants and animals and the natural world around me, showing me lizards and rabbits and blue bonnets every time he found them. Before that day, when I am upset, he walks with me through the neighborhood and talks to me until 3 AM, until I am tired and my feet are sore and I have forgotten my anger. When he visits a friend’s house, he takes pictures of their kittens to share with me, knowing that they will make me smile. When he is driving me to school and the car tire goes flat, he puts his coat over me in the car so I will be warm while he walks to the nearest car garage. He is the kind of person who picks up a wallet in the road and spends the rest of his day finding who it belongs to so that he can return it. He is the kind of person who tells me that if I ever feel unsafe, he will come get me, no matter where I am or what time it is.

I was 20 years old when I watched him stop breathing. As I sat in the garage where we talked the day before, I thought to myself: no one else will ever show me kindness like his. I believed that then, but it is later at that

grocery store in Searcy when the store manager tells me: she’s glad that I came to her. It’s okay if I can’t work today. She writes the names and phone numbers of the local clinics, and gives me the day off to visit one.

Months later, a coworker holds me in the break room when I cannot stop crying. I do not know her name, but she tells me: “It’s okay. We’ll stay here as long as you need to.” Months later, I am frustrated with the cash register. A customer tells me a joke; I can’t remember what it is, but I laugh. “I’m glad that worked,” she says. “I wanted to cheer you up.” Years later, a teacher insists that I have some of her food when I skip breakfast in the morning.

A friend makes me laugh to photograph my genuine smile. A vice principal teaches me how to drive and maintain my car in the snow. A whole school of students share their cooking, or their crafts, or their dreams with me.

Each moment is a drop of water in my cupped hands. In my darkest hour, I may not think