A Lesson in Humanity

Last night, for no other reason than just to be nice, my next door neighbor dropped off one of these to my house. It's called a king cake, apparently it's a Mardi Gras tradition.


I found this information online about them.

King Cakes come in the Mardi Gras colors: purple, green and gold. They first appeared on the cakes after 1872, when the Rex Krewe selected those colors for its opening Mardi Gras parade. The colors come to stand for Mardi Gras and took on symbolic meanings: purple for justice, green for faith, and gold for power. Hidden in each oblong of braided coffee-cake dough is a bean or plastic baby; custom dictates that whoever finds it must give the next King cake party. And one Mardi Gras organization even uses a King cake tradition to choose the queen of its annual ball.

It is amazing to me that simple acts of kindness still have the ability to take my breath away. To understand what I mean by this you really need to know a few things about my neighbor.

You need to know that besides going over to introduce myself and bring dinner when they first moved in last fall, I haven't really spoken to them very much except in passing. You should know that this man and his wife are Katrina evacuees, they were living in New Orleans when it hit and they lost everything. Everything including his mother, two aunts, one son, and two grandchildren. They came here and lived in a hotel for several months until they could get financing to buy a house. Once they bought it, they still had to furnish it... They came literally with the clothes on their back. One of their grandchildren is in my son's class. He came to school that first day with no supplies, wearing an adult undershirt, shorts and flip flops. He spent Katrina in the Dome. He has very old eyes.

So last night at about 6:30 my doorbell rings and there stands my neighbor holding a huge box. He handed it to me and told me that it was a King Cake and he hoped we enjoyed it.

It humbled me.