Unlike Blanche DuBois, I don’t depend on it, but the kindness of strangers sometimes surprises and reassures me.

This morning I slogged through much snow – both falling and fallen – to the hardware store for a 20 kilo bag of anti-slip stuff.

 By the time I got there I was covered with snow and stopped outside the doors to brush some of it off so that it wouldn’t melt and drip once I got into the nice, warm store. I shook the snow off my hat and started to brush it off the rest of me with my mitt.

Then a total stranger gently took the mitt out of my hand, brushed the snow off my back, handed the mitt back and went on her way.