“Whenever I get gloomy with the state of the world, I think about the arrivals gate at Heathrow Airport. General opinion's starting to make out that we live in a world of hatred and greed, but I don't see that. It seems to me that love is everywhere. Often it's not particularly dignified or newsworthy, but it's always there - fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, old friends. When the planes hit the Twin Towers, as far as I know none of the phone calls from the people on board were messages of hate or revenge - they were all messages of love. If you look for it, I've got a sneaky feeling you'll find that love actually is all around.”
My two sisters, Hannah and Meredith, 18 and 16, and I were a few hours behind my parents on our way to our Aunt and Uncle's house to celebrate Christmas with my dad's side of the family. It's a pretty short drive, only about 2 hours. Twenty minutes into the trip, as soon as we crossed the Delaware state line, we heard a small pop. We looked at each other and shrugged our shoulders, it didn't seem like anything was wrong.
About an hour later, when we were deep into "slower lower" my sisters and I were cruising a cool 75 mph and singing along to Taylor Swift oblivious to any problems whatsoever. I could see a car driving parallel with us in the left hand lane yelling at Hannah, who was driving. The woman was screaming "flat flat flat."
Great, we thought, flat tire.
We pulled over and examined that my sister's car did, in fact, have a flat tire on the back wheel of the drivers side. I've had flats before, I wasn't concerned, it wasn't a big deal. I called my dad to get his advice and he said that if we drove a few more miles there would be a wawa. We could fill up our tire with air and pop back onto the highway and get to my uncles.
Perfect plan.
We went to the wawa, and hooked up the air into the tire. Now, this next statement may bring about judgmental laughs, as it did with my father, uncles and cousins when we recounted the story, but understand that neither of us three girls have ever put air into tires before -- therefore, we didn't know what an air pump was suppose to look like. After 15 minutes of trying to put air into the tire and not understanding why it wouldn't fill up, an older man, around 65 years old pulled up and told us that the pump we were using didn't work -- half of the parts were missing. Great. He tried to think of places that had air pumps, but couldn't. But, he had a solution.
He said that he was a fireman, and if we followed him off the highway and into town, he could use the firehouse's air and send us on our way. Perfect!
So, we followed him. We pulled into the Symrna Delaware firehouse and parked the car, the man pulled out the air and started to fill our tire.
"You have a nail in it," he told us. Oh boy. "How far do you think you traveled with the nail in this tire.... an hour? You girls are very very lucky."
He told us that he would plug it for us, but the fire house had no tire plugs. By this point, all the firemen who were at the firehouse, about 5 of them, were out looking at our tire. One guy said that he had a plug at his house and he would go back and get it.
So he left, as he was gone, my sisters and I got a private tour of the Symrna firehouse and got all of their awards and trophies explained to us in detail.
The man with the plug came back, they got on their backs, plugged the tire, filled all four tires up with air and told us we were good to go.
I went to go give the man -- who had originally found us trying to use a broken air pump to put air into a tire with a nail at wawa -- a deep and sincere thank you, shake his hand and and get his name. As I put my hand out, the man bypassed my extended hand and gave me a hug.
So we were back on the road after spending 45 minutes with the firemen who had helped us with more than we had ever asked from them. And the man who found us and made sure we were safely back on the road, never even told us his name.
Moments and stories, like the one my sisters and I experienced yesterday, remind me of how special random acts of kindness can be. These moments give me hope in the human population, that somewhere, deep in our core -- people care about people.
We're called to love one another, yes, but love doesn't always come in the form of giving gifts to your family, or bringing canned items to a soup drive, sometimes it can be selflessly helping out three girls with a flat tire.
Maybe it was because it's Christmas, or maybe it was because the man has three daughters himself, no matter what his reasoning was - he helped us, and asked nothing in return.
So, whenever I am feeling particularly gloomy with the stand of the world, I may not think of the arrivals gate at Heathrow Airport (sorry, Hugh Grant) but I'll think of the five men who fixed our tire. They way they helped us wasn't newsworthy -- but it was love.
And I too have a feeling that if we look for it, love actually is all around.
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