Before-bed read

Newly divorced and feeling alone, Jennie Ivey received a comforting blessing in her mailbox. Little did she know that tiny token of love would spark an incredible journey that healed her in more ways than one

Ishuffled to the end of the driveway and opened my mailbox, certain that it wouldn’t hold anything interesting. After 35 years of marriage, my husband and I had recently separated, and I had moved to a new house. The change-of-address form I’d turned in at the post office hadn’t yet made its way through the system, so I rarely received anything other than mail addressed to “Occupant.”

But this day in early October was different. Inside the mailbox, resting atop a grocery store flier and an ad for a pest-control service, sat a pumpkin. It was bright orange, perfectly round and about the size of a softball.

“What in the world?” I muttered to myself as I picked it up. On one side was a jack-o’-lantern face drawn on with black marker. On the other, these words: Happy Halloween and

God bless you! And there was a postal sticker, meaning that this strange delivery had actually come through the mail. Who would have done such a thing? And why?

As I made my way back to the house, I couldn’t help but smile a little. It had been a long time since anything had happened to brighten my day. The breakup of my marriage had been devastating. Even though I remained in the town where I’d lived for decades

and was surrounded by people I knew, I felt hurt and frightened and very much alone. But in my hand was proof that someone was thinking about me, that someone cared.

I put the pumpkin on the tray in the middle of my coffee table, wondering if I would ever discover who had sent it. As the days passed and I settled into the new routine of living alone for the first time in my life, that happy little pumpkin somehow made me feel a tiny bit better every time I looked at it.

Every now and then, I would ask friends who knew I was in the middle of a painful divorce if, perchance, they had mailed me a jacko’-lantern. The answer was always a convincing no. I asked my grown children, all of whom lived in different towns. Nope, not them. I emailed a cousin, also recently separated from her husband, who lives clear across the country. Did you send me a miniature pumpkin that says

“God bless you”? I wrote.

No, came her almost-immediate reply. “But I wish I had. What a great idea!”

That little orange jack-o’lantern sat on my coffee table all the way through Halloween and Thanksgiving. In early December, when it was time to decorate for Christmas, I picked it up to throw it away. But the pumpkin was still fresh and firm and pleasingly solid in my hand. And it was still grinning at me. It seemed a shame to get rid of it. And so it nestled among jingle bells and peppermint sticks and red-and-green candles throughout the holidays.

Its happy eyes were staring at me on New Year’s Day. And that’s when I made a resolution that changed my life. Months ago, someone—and it was likely that I might not ever discover who—had performed an anonymous act of kindness that showed that he or she cared.

I could do the same.

In February, I mailed a box of Valentine candy with no return address to a nephew who had just lost his job. In March, I left a shamrock plant on the porch of a friend whose beloved cat had died. In April, I sent a stuffed Easter bunny to a colleague at work who had received a frightening medical diagnosis.

And so on and so on—one anonymous act of kindness, every month of the year. Can you guess what I did in October? After learning of a neighbor whose husband had recently asked for a divorce, I mailed her a miniature pumpkin, bright orange and perfectly round and about the size of a softball. On it, I drew a jack-o’-lantern face.

And wrote these words: Happy Halloween and God bless you.

—Jennie Ivey

“Who would have done such a thing? And why? As I made my way back to the house, I couldn’t help but

smile a little.”