28 Mar The Little Pink Plane
When Ella was a little girl, barely two years old, we decided to make a family vacation out of a conference I was attending out of town.
Some toddlers carry dolls or blankets or stuffed animals for comfort, but Ella liked to carry a little pink toy plane. She would clutch it tightly in her small hand wherever we would go.
The night before we were leaving, we went to a restaurant and Ella fell asleep in the booth, curled up and still holding on tight to her little pink plane.
When we carried her out, we didn’t notice that the pink plane must have slipped from her hand. And it wasn’t until the next morning on the way to the airport that we realized the pink plane was missing.
It was a hard flight home with Ella feeling sad. When we arrived home, I called the restaurant to ask if by chance someone might have seen a pink toy plane somewhere near where we were sitting or on the pathway leading to the door. They hadn’t seen anything but took our address just in case.
A few weeks went by. Then one day, when Ella and I went to the mailbox, there was a bulky envelope addressed in capital letters:
TO THE LITTLE GIRL WHO LOST THE PINK PLANE.
Inside was the little pink plane. The return address was not the restaurant’s, but rather a home address. Someone had sent the little pink plane back on their own, using their own envelope and stamps.
I sent a thank you note back to the return address, sharing how much the return of the little pink plane meant to Ella and our family. But for some reason, the letter was returned with a message that the mail couldn’t be delivered.
I think about that little pink plane often and the person who went out of their way to do something kind.
Sometimes we don’t know the little things that make a big difference in someone else’s life. Sometimes we never will know. How wondrous is the way these small acts of kindness dart from one person to another, like the twinkling lights of airplanes traveling across the dark sky.