Ray of Sunshine

When I was little and people mostly ignored me, I saw things and I knew things about people. My mom taught me one important lesson that made me smarter than most of my friends:

“People will always remember your sunshine.”

My mom was made of sunshine. She made people smile even when it was a cloudy day and the sun didn’t promise to come out. She named me Ray, and even though I knew it was a man’s name, I didn’t mind, because I knew that ‘ray’ was just a word after all.

“What better name could you have than ‘Ray’, which is a piece of sunshine?”

My mom actually said that and I rolled my eyes, because I was seven years old and what did I know back then?

My mom wore people like one would wear a coat. She became them, and they felt comfortable because she made them feel warm.

Warm like a ray of sunshine.

*****

I knew something wasn’t right when my mom looked grey and tired one morning. It was the late 1950’s and times were hard for us.

“We have fallen on hard times, Ray.”

I was only twelve then but I saw the bills piling up. I overheard my mom whisper into the telephone to her sister that “the wolves would come knocking.” I remember giggling to myself at the very idea of wolves knocking on our door. I imagined them as circus animals, juggling plates and telling jokes, but my mom’s face etched with worry, made me realise that these wolves would not be entertaining us. I didn’t have a father, he had upped and disappeared leaving us to cope alone, and my mom worked long hours waiting on tables to support us. We had managed just fine the two of us, until one day, she had no job to go to anymore. Her job as a waitress at the cafe was finished just like that … and the wolves were coming to get us.

That’s when the light in our lives became just like the sun when it gets smothered by the clouds. It was cold, dull and sad.

She took to her bed for a while, smiling tight little smiles at me when I crawled in next to her. We would share plates of toast and eggs, and glasses of milk, while we wrapped ourselves around each other like a soft comfort blanket.

Finally, one morning she told me, “We have to find our own sunshine in this world, little Ray! I’m going to put on my smile and find another job, you’ll see, things will get better!”

I rolled my eyes behind her back. I wasn’t wise back then, I was still learning. So what did I know?

School had stopped for the summer and I had twelve long weeks in front of me on my own in the house, while my mom was out finding work. I amused myself by drawing pictures of various versions of the same girl standing atop a mountain arms in the air, with a yellow ball of sun behind her. These would cheer her up when she came in dejected, yet again, after a long and tiring day of being rejected. She would look at my picture and say,

“There she is, Ray … arms reaching for the sun!”

It seemed nobody wanted to employ an uneducated single mom with little experience, even though she wore a cape made of yellow light and her words inspired you to smile. There were no jobs in our small town back then and I could see she was struggling to keep her face bright.

I felt useless. I wanted to see her truly happy again.

And then I found her little black book.

*****

It was only through sheer boredom one day that I picked up her little black address book and flicked through it, seeing pages of names and telephone numbers. It was entirely unremarkable at first sight, except I had been taught to read between the lines and to find the meaning. And there, beside each and every name and number that my mom had recorded, was a uniquely different note:

“Man at bus stop. Seemed sad, offered him a sip from my flask of coffee.”

“Poor Elsie, struggling with her baby in the cafe while I waited her table. I took the baby and soothed him while she ate her sandwich, she seemed so tired...”

“Betsy is so lonely since Frank passed. Must visit her every Thursday and sit with her.”

It took me a while to realize that these little notes, these reminders to herself beside every single name and telephone number, were important. She had to stay in contact with these souls she had touched.

There were so many! Pages and pages of people she seemed to have made time for, sat with, reached in some way. I don’t know what made me pick up our telephone and dial the number next to “Bus Stop Man.”

I wasn’t sure what I was going to say but something, perhaps boredom, perhaps intuition, made me dial that number.

*****

It turned out that Bus Stop Man not only remembered my mom, he wouldn’t shut up about her. I remember rolling my eyes a little, in the way only a pre-teen can do. But what did I know back then?

“She was so sweet to me! I was down on my luck and she sat and shared her coffee, even missed her bus to work!” Bus Stop Man paused and his voice got real soft. “You know, she would call me after that, once a week … we have been telephone buddies for a good few years now. Is she okay? I haven’t heard from her in a while.”

I told him that she was down on her luck and that the wolves were going to come knocking, even though I didn’t know what the wolves would do when they got here.

He laughed a little at that and asked how he could help.

******

And that’s how it started.

I would call people every day. I went through that little black book and spoke to them all, hearing how my mom had taken the time to listen to them, helping them through problems, celebrating their little victories, soothing their worries.

I spoke to Bus Stop Man, Betsy who’d lost Frank, the tired new mom who just wanted five minutes to eat her sandwich, the retired nurse who had a coffee with my mom every morning and needed someone else to hear her stories, the school teacher who had lost her purse and needed a sweet tea, the window cleaner who loved to hear her sing while he cleaned the windows of the cafe, the young girl who had no place to go because she couldn’t find her “yellow place”...

As I listened I cried. I was so proud of this woman who had taught me to find the sunshine and how she had helped others find theirs. I didn’t beg these strangers who lived inside my mom’s black book. I asked for nothing. I only told them her story, that she was my mom and she needed help because she was grey now and her smile was all wrong.

Turned out they all wanted to give something back to her.

That’s when the checks arrived … they all sent her money of differing amounts, with little notes that told her how she had touched their lives. I would collect these envelopes filled with the promise of money and words of love from our mailbox and I’d hide them under my bed. I would shake in amazement at the wonder of kindness and how kindness fills your heart with a brighter light than the sun.

There were over three hundred envelopes by the time I handed them to my mom.

*******

“Well, little Ray, you have been busy!”

My mom sat, stunned, holding the envelopes after having read all the notes, crying through each one. Her beautiful smile was radiant on her face because it was real again. I got the feeling that her smile was more for the words in those little notes, than the figures on the checks. She closed her eyes for the longest time and when she finally opened them, she looked at me in a way that no one has looked at me ever since.

“You realise what you did, Ray? You saved us! I don’t know if you realise what you did … but you are my little ray of sunshine, you know that?”

She threw her head back and laughed so much that I laughed too, and we danced around giggling like two children.

*****

People had sent us a total of a little over $20,000. My mom leased a little shop and set up “The Sunshine Cafe” and people came for the coffee because it was actually quite good, but they mostly stayed for the warmth, because she really was made of sunshine.

Many years later, I buried that black book with my mom.

I still wear her like a coat, to this very day.