By Patience Salgado

Between this boy and his bike, there was a deep love. I completely get it: the wind blowing on your face and going faster than your legs can take you. It is all of boyhood in its perfect freedom. Then it happened. Just one look and I knew it was gonna be bad.

I came home late one night to find our gate wide open and both of our boys’ bikes gone. They hadn’t been locked. I guess we felt so at home that guards were down … or maybe there were never any guards up and we are at home in every way. I broke the news to him gently but he very dramatically ran to the porch just to make sure it was true. He burst into tears. It was the saddest cry from an 8-year-old you’ve ever heard.

“I just don’t understand, Mom. Why? Why would someone take my bike from me? I loved that bike so much, Mom, it was the one I learned to ride on. We had so, so many good times,” he went on remembering. His view of the world was rocked.

I didn’t care too much about the bikes; they were thrift store specials. One was a really good Trek find, but even that bike was too small for him now. My head went straight to the need; it must have been great to take them, on whatever level. And it’s just stuff, right? This is the story I tried to tell my boy to soothe his wounds. He looked like he was trying to take it in but stories and platitudes do not change the fact that you are still sad and disappointed. I didn’t even try to take that away, because so often grief is a friend to us in times like these. It means we care and love, even for simple things like bicycles and memories.

I looked at the sidewalk art my daughter and I made on the morning the bikes were stolen. “This Way To Love,” the chalk said. Maybe my invitation was clear, if love in whatever form was what someone needed. Every now and then I start to wonder if I live in a Kindness Wonderland (à la Alice), a place I have created in my head and heart. The one where Pollyanna dances, far from cynicism and darkness, one that believes in the good over and over again. A place where kindness can be found, no matter what. Sometimes living this way does require you to believe six impossible things before breakfast … and then there are moments when I start to wonder if I just fell down the hole. I must be mad.

Mad or not, my children will have to decide for themselves, and even I couldn’t blame them for any conclusions they were making that day. We walked to the park but that just reminded him of more riding adventures. He came home and he cried some more. It was so heartbreaking.

Less than an hour later there was a knock at the door. I opened the door and literally gasped. The whole street – men, women, kids, babies, with the same gates wide open and gathered ’round stood there with two new boys bike… and now I was the one who burst into tears.

They said they wanted Jack to know the world was still good, and my world was the one that was rocked. I was completely overwhelmed that people would love my family this way. It was proof that the impossible thought of great kindness was real, and we were humbled and so deeply touched by it every time those boys climbed on those bikes. Now any shred of doubt would be replaced with such assurance, stronger than before.

The fact that we got to live next to these people, side by side, every day – this was the greatest kindness.

We didn’t know how we could ever thank them. Jack suggested “ding dong ditching” them his entire savings in equal very small portions. We settled on some homemade chocolate chip cookies and thank-you notes. When all was said and done, Jack told me he thought maybe everyone got what they needed in the end: the person who took his bike got his bike, he got his lesson about the world and his new bike, and our family got love.

I’m pretty sure I know the way to love. Thank you to our street for reminding me. It’s all right here, Wonderland and all.

This timeless story was originally published by Patience Salgado on her blog, www.kindnessgirl.com, and republished here as part of our Bike Issue collaboration.

Photo by Patience Salgado