Dear Scarlette,
I want to tell you about kindness. It’s a word that you hear me say often. “Scarlette, can you be kind and share your crayons?” I ask during coloring time at the library. “Scarlette, that was not kind” I say when you throw your snack cup at a little boy in frustration.
You are too little to know this now but kindness will shape your life in the best of ways, even when it doesn’t feel like it.
When I was growing up I had the great blessing of spending time with a woman named Vonne, my grandmother and your namesake.
Your father and I made elaborate lists of names for you, our first and only child. “Lila? Mia? Anne?” we volleyed back and forth over the dinner table. “Veto” one of us would reply as we laughed and touched my ever growing belly. “I want to name her for my grandmother” I repeated.
Your father never knew her. On our wedding day, she accompanied me down the aisle in a pearl studded picture frame tied to my bouquet. “Why?” he asked me as we scanned a set of bottles to be added to a baby registry.
“Because, I answered simply, she was one of the best women that I have ever known. She was so kind.”
I wanted you to hold a part of that legacy, Scarlette, the way she was kind.
On her days off she drove to the homes of church members who were housebound and took them to their doctor’s appointments or to visit the graves of their husbands. At eight years old I pouted when she told me that Ruthie would be accompanying us to the store.
She pulled the car over. “Kayla Aimee,” she said and the use of both my names often reserved for scolding was gentle but insistent and my heart sank at the soft disappointment I heard in it.
“Kayla Aimee, you may not understand now but the greatest way you can love someone is to show them kindness. Ruthie can not leave her home and she is lonely. It would be very kind of you to share our day with her.”
I grew to love Ruthie too.
I wish I could teach you lessons the way she could, without guilt or fear but with love and intent. It is my hope.
When I was in the sixth grade there was a girl named Helen.* The other kids called her Lizard. I did not want to be her friend. She was a nice girl but at eleven years old I did not care as much about nice as I did about avoiding attracting any attention that might earn me an animal name of my own. I did not want to be a target. I just wanted to be invisible.
Every day she waited for me outside of Home Ec class and talked to my quiet form as we walked down the hallways to the next one. I tried ducking into the bathroom after Home Ec but she just followed me in there and chattered outside of my stall about how she was going to try out for the cheerleading squad. “Why would you do that? Don’t you know they are just going to be even meaner to you?” I wanted to ask her.
“Why do you let Lizard walk with you to class?” my friend asked me as we laid on her bunk beds.
“I don’t….she just sort of shows up every day. And don’t call her Lizard, that makes you sound like Regina George.” I said.
“Whatever. Why don’t you just tell her to stop talking to you? People are making fun of you because of her.”
“I don’t know, I mumbled as I glared at the ceiling in misery, I just can’t be mean to her.”
In a new millennium a kid named Mark Zuckerberg would invent Facebook and suddenly the past would invade my living room and faces long left in yearbook pages would stare out from my inbox.
One single private message would read “Thank you for being kind to me in middle school. It meant a lot to me.” Signed simply, “Helen.”
I would have mixed emotions, remembering too well the resentment at I felt at her infringing on my invisibility but being gentle with myself in reflection. I was an eleven year old girl who just wanted to avoid public ridicule and desperately wanted to be kind to others and could not reconcile the two within the scenario that occurred each and every day after Home Ec. I fell short of kindness but sidestepped mean in my attempt at navigating social standings and fruits of the spirit.
Don’t get me wrong, Scarlette. I have been mean. I have sat on the other side of this story and watched myself become a Regina George, mocking and hateful. I will tell you of those mistakes too, because the choices we make may only last a night at a sleepover or a second at a keyboard but they linger in other hearts longer.
It is my hope, though, that as we go through this life together, mother and child, you will store away in your heart what it means to be kind. That you will watch as we give up our seat for someone else, as we let an elderly woman cut in front of us in line, as we say a kind word to the harried mother who has dropped her purse in the middle of the store while we retrieve it’s scattered contents.
That when it is hard, you are brave enough to choose kindness. And that if you don’t, you grow and you learn and you get better at it. Until one day, when you are in your twenties and the woman in front of you berates the cashier you will lean on that lesson and you will speak gently, kindly and you will offer an extra measure of it to the shaken girl behind the counter.
Perfection is rarely achieved and I don’t demand it from you, even in this. You’ll fall short, you’ll regret, you’ll bite your lip and later wish you’d done something differently. There is grace enough to cover all of that. But be always striving to be kind.
Because kindness leaves a legacy, even the smallest moments of it.
Quote created using digital elements from 
About Kayla Aimee
Yes. Yes, and yes. This is beautiful. I too, have been thanked for kindnesses, and it is a strange thing — being thanked for doing the RIGHT THING. In this day and age, it is more important than ever to teach our kids to show kindness! It seems that there are more and more people who don’t see a simple kindness in an average day. Oh that I (Christ in me) might be the one to show it to them!
I love this! Looking forward to reading the rest of the series!
So amazing KA! Thank you for sharing with us
Love you!
Wow. This is fantastic. What a lovely way to capture the things that you want to pass on to your daughter. And kindness is a great one to start with. I am looking forward to reading the rest of this series.
And now that you are going to write for this blog a little less, this is the way to go for sure. So focused but utterly engaging and lovely. Best wishes to you and your sweet family.
Such an inspiring post. I am looking forward to reading this new series. I can easily see a compilation of these in a book at the end of the year.
Thanks Julie, I am hoping to put them all together in a little book for her to pass on when she’s older.
Love this. As I read this I reflected on my own life, Instances where I achieved kindness and those when I often failed. Sometimes it is easy to be kind others it is so so hard. I look forward to what you share.
Beautiful! Sounds like you had a special grandma. Love the series and liked how honest you were about being mean sometimes, we all are, and what a great lesson for scarlette in the future to look back on.
Thanks so much! And yes, my grandma was a special lady
I love this! It especially speaks to my heart as this is something I am trying so hard to instill into my children. We have an old chalkboard up in our kitchen and for the last month it has read “Speak and Act in Kindness”….My eldest son’s teacher just called last week and said he was the kindest boy in class and she wished she could have a whole class of him because he would never do anything to hurt another student..One of my proudest Mommy moments EVER!
That is so sweet! I would be so proud too
What a wonderful post! And for the record, I remember you to be a kind person to a younger, dorkier highschooler as well. I hope that I can instill this lesson in my children as well, to prefer others more than self and it starts with us as parents. Can’t wait to read the next post!
“Perfection is rarely achieved and I don’t demand it from you, even in this. You’ll fall short, you’ll regret, you’ll bite your lip and later wish you’d done something differently. There is grace enough to cover all of that.”
KA, you are quotable. This is well said!
I love this post! I’m doing something similar for our twins and I also have tons of journals from years past to share with them. I want them to see the kind of person I am today, since they are so little and not yet capable of having conversations with us about life and its lessons.
I look forward to your future posts!!
So beautifully written! Thank you for sharing!
So inspiring. These are things that I don’t think of in the day to day – I tend to handle them in the moment, in the heat-of, and I don’t always TEACH best in that moment. I want my girls to learn these lessons “without guilt or fear, but with love and intent” Well said. Well said.
This made me tear up. Kindness is a very important lesson and you were fortunate and blessed to have a grandmother who taught you this and now you can pass this lesson of kindness on to Scarlette and all of us who read your blog. I will be more aware of kindness in the future. Thank you for your inspiration.
My sister has said to her children as they run out the door to school, “be sweet, be smart, be kind” every single day since they started preschool at three. They a now 21, 20, &17. It works KA, it works.
How beautiful your lesson for Scarlette! How thoughtful, precise and precious your words. And how lovely that while meant for your beautiful and miraculous daughter, they take root in the heart of this 46 year old reader. I would like to think that I am kind. I would want to see myself as having that soft word in harsh moments. I would like to think that with age has come wisdom and tolerance. But far too often it has only brought frustration and lack of patience and I too am human and thus I fail. And while I am never intentionally unkind, I can and should be more intentionally kind.
There must be a reason I cannot sleep at 3:25 AM. There must be a reason I reached through the dark for my iPad and clicked on my “Kayla Aimee” bookmark. There must be a reason these are the words you chose to post at this time.It really is the perfect bedtime story dear Kayla.
Scarlette is a very fortunate little girl. I am a big believer in there being a reason for everything. I would never suggest that there was a reason for Scarlette’s suffering or the suffering that you and your husband endured living through those very early and tiniest days. I do, however, believe it is no coincidence that Scarlette’s miracle brought your voice to thousands who waited breathlessly for an update on a tiny little girl who fought so hard to live. Scarlette’s miracle brought us to this place. Your words keep us in this community.
God bless Scarlette and her wise beyond her years mama!
I have worked in a cardiologist office for the last 5 years. The majority of our patients are elderly. They forget the simpliest of instructions, never bring what they need and think you have all day to attend to them as they no longer have busy schedules. It’s hard at times to be kind. It’s hard to be patient. It’s hard to love. But then I remember “be kind and rewind” from the VCR era. Today your lovely message to Scarlette reminded me of that simple saying on the VCR rental box and it is ringing so true in the heart of this 52 year old gramma. Today I will learn (again) along with Scarlette to (rewind) and be kind. Such a lovely message to pass on to my sweet little grandbaby Reagan who is now 20 months old.
Thank you for reminding me of this very important lesson..!
You are leaving a wonderful legacy to your daughter
My mom died when I was 21 and I wish I had something like your writings from her. I write letters to my daughters as well and I try to model the behavior that I want to see in them. Yes I fall short but I also let them see me ask for forgiveness and let them know that it is ok not to be perfect. I wish I could write like you do because you just have a way of saying things that I just love! Keep up the great work.
I am at work with tears rolling down my face. I’m sure that I am quite a sight to see.
I absolutely loved this post. I am also trying to instill values to last a lifetime in my daughter by teaching her some of the lessons I’ve learned. I have a journal that I write in from time to time and I will be giving it to her one day (she is two). These life lessons are so important and I wish all parents would instill kindness in their kids.
I don’t often comment on blogs, but this one really struck a core with me. I am a young mom of two young children (almost 2 and 9 months) and this is exactly our desire for our little ones. My husband and I have talked often about what we would like our famiy to be characterized and we could not find anything more than being kind (other than loving God). So many other “good” traits that you would want your children to be all stem from being kind. So, thank you for writing. This is exactly what I want to speak/teach my children every day.