Big Hearts and Busted Lawnmowers

Have you ever noticed how the people with the biggest hearts seem to collect the worst kind of folks–like porch lights attract moths?

I’ve been thinking about that lately, watching my 89-year-old neighbor from the comfort of my front porch bench. She’s the kind of woman who keeps a mason jar of dog biscuits by her front door—not for her dog, mind you, but for the strays that wander up like they got an invite.

She’s been on this road longer than most of us. Her house needs some paint, and her roof’s been missing the same shingle since the second Bush administration, but her living room is spotless, and there’s always a pot of something warm on the stove.

She’s got a heart like an open field—room for everyone and then some. The problem is folks take advantage of people like that. You’ve seen it.

That third cousin who shows up looking for “just a place to crash ‘til payday.” Or the neighbor’s kid who borrows your tools, bringing them back rustier than a 1937 Studebaker. She gets the whole mess of them.

Last fall, she took in a nephew who said he was “between apartments.” That’s code saying, “I burned all my bridges and need a soft landing.”

He came with one duffel bag, no job, and a collection of ex-girlfriends that would fill up a church pew. She fixed him the back bedroom, fried eggs every morning, and even let him borrow her late husband’s old John Deere mower.

As things go, I should’ve known trouble was brewing when I saw him riding the mower through her front yard of rocks like it was a convertible Mustang. He’d wave at me, shirtless, cigarette dangling from his mouth, that motor clunking like an old codger with arthritis.

His aunt just laughed and said he was “figuring things out.” Bless her.

Course, three weeks later, the mower was in pieces behind her shed, the nephew was gone, and so was the silver-plated coffee urn she’d gotten as a wedding gift. She didn’t call the cops, didn’t even raise her voice. She just looked down the road like she expected him to come a-waltzing back with an apology.

When I asked why she let people walk all over her, she smiled, poured me some of that weak chamomile tea she favors, and said, “I’d rather have a heart that gets bruised than one that stays locked up.”

I didn’t have much to say to that. I just watched the wind tug at the loose shingle on the roof, flapping like an old flag, still trying to wave proudly.

That’s the thing about folks like her. They know what they’re doing.

We might think they’re naive or too soft, but the truth is, they’ve chosen to love the unlovable. They hold the door open, even when it gets slammed in their face.

And once in a while, they find someone worth the trouble.

I guess the rest of us have to learn when to lend a hand, when to tighten the screws on an old mower or paint the side of a house, and when to sit quietly with someone who still believes people can be better than their worst days.

And maybe, if lucky, that belief rubs off on us—right along with the smell of frying eggs and chamomile tea.