What She Gave Me

Sometimes the smallest kindness reaches us at exactly the moment we need it.

I still remember the Diet Coke and the Snickers.

Liz told me the Diet Coke made the Snickers okay.

I was thirteen, she was seventeen, and for some reason that little sentence has stayed tucked away in my memory for more than forty years.

But then again, so has she.

I didn't really know Liz Green.

We lived only a few blocks apart in Algonac, Michigan, but she was older than me. At thirteen, four years felt like an enormous difference. Seventeen-year-old girls belonged to an entirely different world.

And then one summer day, she came to my house.

She asked if I wanted to hang out with her.

I remember being surprised.

Almost flattered.

This older girl wanted to spend the day with me?

I couldn't quite believe it.

So I said yes.

A Summer Afternoon I Never Expected to Remember

We walked uptown together.

Nothing extraordinary happened.

There wasn't some life-changing conversation or dramatic moment I could point to and say, there — that's why I remembered her.

We got something to drink.

We bought a Snickers.

She made me laugh about balancing it out with a Diet Coke.

And we walked.

Eventually, we went back to her house.

I remember her family being outside. I remember them talking with me and laughing. I remember the house, the yard, the warmth of the afternoon.

Mostly, though, I remember how it felt to be included.

That part mattered more than Liz could possibly have known.

I Was Lonelier Than She Knew

Thirteen was a strange age for me.

The friends I had grown up with were beginning to move into that next stage of being teenagers — going places, doing things, discovering a little more freedom.

My life didn't quite work that way.

My dad was strict, and there were a lot of things other kids my age were beginning to do that I simply wasn't allowed to do.

Little by little, the world I had known began changing.

Friends were branching out.

People were moving forward.

And I remember feeling as though I were standing still.

I was lonely.

Not necessarily in the way that anyone looking at me would have immediately recognized.

But inside, I felt it.

I was at that awkward place between childhood and everything that was supposed to come next, without really knowing where I belonged.

And then this seventeen-year-old girl I barely knew walked a few blocks and asked me to spend the day with her.

I don't think she could have understood what that meant to me.

Maybe she didn't even think twice about it.

But I did.

She Made Me Feel Chosen

There is something enormous about being chosen when you're young and lonely.

Especially by someone you admire simply because they're older, cooler, more confident, or seem to belong to the world you're still trying to understand.

Liz didn't treat me like a little kid she had to tolerate.

She didn't make me feel like I was tagging along.

For that afternoon, I was simply with her.

Included.

Wanted there.

And when you're thirteen and unsure of where you fit, that feeling can settle much deeper than anyone realizes.

I remember walking home from that day feeling good.

Nothing monumental had happened.

And yet something had.

Someone had noticed me.

And Then She Was Gone

A few months later, Liz died.

She was seventeen years old.

I remember the shock of it.

How strange it felt that someone so young — someone I had only recently walked around town with, laughed with, and spent an ordinary summer afternoon beside — was suddenly gone.

I had known her for only that day.

And somehow, I never forgot her.

Over the years, I've thought about that afternoon more times than I could count.

And I've wondered about something I will never be able to answer.

Why did she come to my house that day?

Had she noticed me before?

Did she somehow sense that I was lonely?

Was she simply looking for someone to walk uptown with?

Maybe there wasn't any reason at all.

Maybe it was just an ordinary decision on an ordinary summer afternoon for her.

But it wasn't ordinary to me.

We Rarely Know When We Become Part of Someone Else's Story

I think we imagine that if we ever truly change someone's life, we'll know it.

There will be some important conversation.

Some grand gesture.

Some obvious moment.

But I'm not sure that's how it usually happens.

Sometimes it is much quieter.

You invite someone along.

You sit beside the person who seems left out.

You make somebody laugh.

You ask the younger girl down the street if she wants to spend the day with you.

You share a Diet Coke and a Snickers.

And then you go home having absolutely no idea that the person beside you will still remember your kindness decades later.

Liz probably never knew.

There was no reason she would.

She was seventeen.

She was living her own life.

And yet one small piece of that life became permanently woven into mine.

Her Light Reflection

Some people stay in our lives for years. Others leave something behind after only a few hours.

When I created Her Light, I wanted it to be about women whose lives leave something behind in us.

Not necessarily famous women.

Not perfect women.

Not even women we knew for very long.

Sometimes a person's light reaches us in a single afternoon.

Liz's did.

I wish I could tell her that.

I wish I could tell her that the thirteen-year-old girl she invited along that summer never forgot her.

That she remembered the walk.

The laughter.

The backyard.

The Diet Coke.

The Snickers.

But most of all, I remembered how it felt when an older girl I barely knew chose me for a day.

And maybe that's one of the most beautiful things about kindness.

We don't always get to see where it goes.

Sometimes we simply give it away.

And somewhere, years later, someone is still carrying it.

Her light stayed with me.

Until next time,

Kelly 🤍

LifeWithCates

Continue Reading

The Women I Never Forgot

Another reflection on the women whose kindness stayed long after the moment itself.

Why I Created Her Light

The story behind this series and why I believe the women who shape us deserve to be remembered.

Finding Yourself Again: The Woman I Thought I’d Be Isn’t Gone

A reflection for the seasons when you feel disconnected from the person you used to be.