Self-esteem in action

My older sister recently moved here from Phoenix, leaving behind her grown children and newly-born granddaughter. It has been wrenching for her, to say the least. Her youngest came to visit her mother for her birthday, and although our schedules were not too compatible, we got to have dinner with them on Sunday.

After dinner, we adjourned to a nearby Peet's, for hot chocolate and cookies. And it was here that Maya, who had not realized it was her cousin's birthday, improvised a present. She borrowed a pencil from her aunt and got herself a hot drink lid -- the plastic kind that fits over those paper cups, and has a small hole surrounded by an indentation. The one that could kind of look like a smiley face if you stuck two holes in it with a pencil (those would be the eyes). So she did that, and then turned it over and wrote a small note on the inside, then gave it to her cousin. And I really couldn't help thinking how touching it was that she could give her cousin what amounts to personalized trash with the full confidence that her cousin would appreciate it.

To her everlasting credit, her cousin responded more than appropriately, even saving her birthday coffee lid from being thrown away when I was clearing the table without looking too closely.

More than anything else, though, I find myself admiring Maya's quick thinking.