A Year of Doing Good

by Judith O'Reilly

  Good deed no. 236.

  Thursday, 25 August

  Good deed no. 237: sent Jam Jar Army artwork over to the mental health charity Derwentside Mind, who want to raise money for themselves.

  Friday, 26 August

  Good deed no. 238: Dr Will and his son washed up very forlorn, having been caught in terrible traffic en route to the Edinburgh Fringe, so I invited them to share our roast chicken dinner. (The son is a gluten-free, dairy-free vegan – he shared our vegetables, our air and our conversation.)

  Saturday, 27 August

  Mum and Dad arrived yesterday morning. My mum’s back is really bad – she is walking very slowly and carefully as if she were some novice in a martial arts film training to walk with light and spread toes over a fragile carpet of white chicken eggs without cracking one. She manages the pain when she is sitting, but any sort of movement hurts. Why can’t we just go on and on and then stop? Why do we have to fall apart first and then grind to a halt in the middle of the traffic where juggernauts of pain are sure to run right into and over us?

  Good deed no. 239: put money into jam jars in shops in the market town. (Worryingly, none of the jars looked that full. When I say ‘looked that full’, I should say that they ‘looked distinctly empty’.)

  Sunday, 28 August

  Horror. My neighbour down the lane is on some pavilion committee and a couple of months ago asked me to organize and run the tombola for the summer fete. I wrote it in my diary. I forgot to read my diary. I spent the day down in Newcastle buying clothes for the kids to go back to school. Oh my God. Have they had a fete without a tombola? Is that even possible?

  Good deed no. 240: sent a fantasy adventure book to Merry.

  Monday, 29 August

  Shamefaced, I rang my neighbour about the tombola. He let me crawl in apology for a couple of minutes, then said he had forgotten to pass on the fact I’d volunteered for the tombola anyway, so someone else organized it. Big fat phew.

  Good deed no. 241: attended Lifeboat Day in a local village, despite the fact they didn’t want me as a coastguard (I bear no grudge, not one bit. Instead I paid a pound to have a go on one of those metal loop-the-loops that bleep when you brush it with a metal ring, navigating my course from the jolly blue and orange lifeboat across a painted plywood sea to a sinking ship, and hardly got a bleep at all. I rest my case).

  Tuesday, 30 August

  The end of the holidays is almost in sight. I took the children to a bouldering wall in the sports centre so that the three of them could scramble up it. Naively, I assumed they would be harnessed to a beefy young man and guided up and down the rocks. Instead, it was up to them to move from rock to rock. My little girl traversed a curved rock face like a goat, while the boys attempted the riskier vertical climb, competing against each other to see who could get highest. At a certain point, my eldest would stop, cling to the wall and then leap off and away onto the deep foam mattresses that lined the floor. He did it again and again and again, his awareness that he might fall if he climbed further pipping the urgent desire to get that bit higher. He did not appreciate my five-year-old daughter’s advice as she hopped from rock to rock, ‘You have to believe in yourself.’ She watches too much Disney.

  Good deed no. 242: agreed to take Lily’s son on Thursday, so she can meet a deadline.

  Wednesday, 31 August

  My dad asked me to speed things up for my mum re her referral to a consultant for her back. They mentioned it a couple of weeks ago and I uttered platitudes along the lines of Let’s see what happens, she is in the system and I’m sure it won’t be long. This morning, though, before she tottered into breakfast, he said how very bad she was. I know he’s right, and God knows they would do anything for me. My only hesitation was that I went through this last year for the operation on her spine, and it worked and the consultant was lovely throughout, and you don’t want to be seen special-pleading all the time. But scruples seem ridiculous when your aged father is telling you the poor state your blind, pain-wracked mother is in.

  Good deed no. 243: rang the consultant’s office re mum’s referral for a cracked vertebra (they checked and hadn’t had it), rang GP’s surgery to arrange a fax of the referral (they claimed they’d sent it) and emailed the consultant twice to explain the situation. He said he was sorry to hear about my mum and he would do what he could. Mum promptly bollocked my dad when she realized what he’d done.

  Thursday, 1 September

  There are builders in the farmyard at the back of the house renovating an old cart shed for my Yorkshire cousins, who bought it off the farmer because they want their own holiday cottage. The disruption hasn’t been too bad, but after my mum and dad left this morning and Lily’s son arrived, one of the builders started using a nail-gun to construct a complex framework of wooden struts to lay the plasterboards against. Whenever he shot a nail into the wood, there was a loud boom, and whenever there was a loud boom, it set his Jack Russell dog off barking – loudly. I let it go, and I let it go, and the noise was tipping me over into a migraine so I went out and suggested they might like to tie the dog up at the front. As I’m talking to them, the damn dog makes a beeline for my kitchen door and suddenly he is in the house, but I think that’s OK, I’ll let him out the front myself. As I’m thinking that, he cocks his leg and wees in the hallway. I’m looking up ‘Dog Stew’ in Delia.

  Good deed no. 244: took kids’ stuff that’s too old for the charity shop to the recycling bin at the tip.

  Friday, 2 September

  Took the boys down to see the latest Harry Potter movie and bought a bucket of popcorn and water for them and a coffee for me. They went to the loo and I left them standing in the foyer while I went. I was away two minutes. Two minutes, and when I came out two cinema attendants were standing over them at the edges of a popcorn sea that surrounded the waste bin and my two boys. They had decided to have a popcorn fight. Seriously? I wouldn’t mind, but there were roadworks and it had taken two hours to get down, I’d had to beg a favour to get someone to take my little girl for the day, and we were trying to be discreet because I wasn’t entirely sure whether they were allowed in at their ages. Not a good start to the movie. I should really have marched them straight back out, but I couldn’t face another two-hour trip home again with hysterics in the back of the car, so we compromised on them picking up the popcorn piece by piece by piece. So much for me setting a good example with my virtuous life. If I was a good example, I’d have set them a fitting punishment like giving their bucket of popcorn to a hungry child without one.

  Good deed no. 245: gave a cupcake to a neighbour.

  Saturday, 3 September

  Good deed no. 246: took some of my sons’ stuff to Sue Ryder.

  Sunday, 4 September

  Good deed no. 247: overnight hospitality to an unexpected visitor.

  Monday, 5 September

  An entire day of good deeds. I sorted out my daughter’s bedroom yesterday afternoon, and this morning I took school pinafores and old toys into Sue Ryder on my second drop-off of the week; I gave my cousin a bed for the night again; I brought out tea (twice) and iced buns (once) to the builders (bearing in mind they are not even my builders); and I gave someone directions for the fish shop and picked up a baby’s Tupperware bowl and lid in M&S – I am sooooooooo virtuous.

  Good deed no. 248: gave away a wooden rocking horse to Sue Ryder. (I wanted to give something of proper value, having been seized by the sudden conviction that the stuff I was giving away was helping me more than it was helping the charity shop.) NB: I have discovered it is very liberating to let go of things. I have also discovered my children have far too much of everything.

  Tuesday, 6 September

  Manifold good deeds again today, including taking a photo of ramblers on a sand-blasted windswept beach, picking up jam jars, and making tea for the builders working outside, which makes me wonder if it is all becoming a bit compulsive. You definitely get a buzz from good-deeding, but I see no evidence to date th
at doing my good deeds is making me a better person. I am no more patient, no more kind, no less selfish. I have made small differences to other people’s lives for the better, but no great difference to my own – other than to complicate my life considerably, according to my husband. I am going to up my game and do some proper volunteering.

  Good deed no. 249: picked up jam jars in one of the villages (including big coffee jar, which the ten-year-old promptly dropped – glass shards and splinters and coins all over the road, bringing traffic to a standstill. Helped by three good-deed doers: a nice lady who helped us pick up coins and glass, a builder who shovelled up the last of the glass and coins so traffic could start rolling, and a holidaymaker who gave us a plastic bag to put the broken glass in and then gave us a pound when he realized it was for the hospice.

  Wednesday, 7 September

  I dropped the children off at school for the first day of the new academic year and the usually smiley mum with the crutch said forlornly, ‘My, that summer’s gone quickly’ as her little blond lovely skipped off into class. I watched as she hung his coat on his peg, blank and outright disbelief flooding my veins, and groped for any response that wouldn’t incriminate me as a bad mother who didn’t love her children enough to want to spend every waking moment of her entire life with them. ‘You have to be kidding, right?’ wasn’t going to cut it.

  Swallows are everywhere, swooping and diving round and round like autumn leaves caught in gusting wind, ready to fly to winter haunts. Outside, there is windblown sunshine; inside, there is nothing. Letting myself back in after the school drop-off, it was as if nobody lived here at all – apart from the smell. Unfortunately, the kitchen resembles the boudoir of an aged and painted harlot: it smells of roses, bunches and bunches of roses – warmed because the air is warm from the Aga. Reaching for a cup last night, I managed to knock a full glass bottle of perfume from the mouth of the cupboard onto the black granite kitchen counter and smash it. I used to like the scent of roses, but you can have too much of a good thing. I’ve mopped the floor, wiped the counter and everything that was on the counter, antiseptic-sprayed both, wrapped up the broken bottle in newspaper, emptied the kitchen bin, thrown out the cloths I’ve used and washed out the mop – and still it is like living in a bowl of potpourri.

  Perhaps, though, the smell is the reward for my good deeds? It reminds me of a fairy story I read as a kid with a good sister and a bad sister, and wherever the bad sister walked there were poisonous toads and green slime and snails and vicious rats, and wherever the good sister went flowers grew in her wake and bluebirds sang and small silver bells tinkled in a gentle summer breeze. Perhaps now wherever I go the smell of roses will linger? Shame it is making me gag. Although I can live with that if the smell is a foretaste of what life would be like as a saint.

  In Catholic theology there is such a thing as the ‘odour of sanctity’ – a phenomenon known as osmogenesia. Padre Pio, for instance, was a priest born in 1887 who died in 1968 and was canonized by Pope John Paul II in 2002. Reports have it that he developed stigmata (which hardly seems fair), could bilocate (that is to say, could be in two places at once, allowing him to be twice as holy), has a thousand miracles attributed to him and gave out a ‘very intense and pleasant fragrance, similar to the scent of the violet’, according to a bishop sent to investigate him. Other witness reports mention the smell being of roses, jonquil, lilies or incense, sometimes from his wounds and their dressings, sometimes from his clothing or left behind where he had walked. To judge by my kitchen, that may be the reason he was in two places at once: maybe one of him was trying to get away from the heady floral notes surrounding him. I love the stories to do with Padre Pio. One of them involves American airmen during the Second World War abandoning attempts to drop bombs on his hometown of San Giovanni Rotondo after seeing a floating, bearded, brown-robed friar above the city.

  A whole host of Catholic saints and holy types allegedly give off this smell of virtue, including the Little Flower or St Thérèse of Lisieux, often featured in statues clutching a crucifix and a spray of roses. ‘What matters,’ she said, ‘is not great deeds but great love.’ In 1897, shortly before the 24-year-old Carmelite nun died of tuberculosis, she said: ‘After my death, I will let fall a shower of roses. I will spend my heaven doing good upon earth. I will raise up a mighty host of little saints. My mission is to make God loved …’ At her death a strong scent of roses was detectable for days after, and many of those who have asked for St Thérèse’s intervention believe they have received not only the grace of God but a symbol of it in roses or the smell of roses. She’d love my kitchen.

  Good deed no. 250: rang and listened to a friend whose husband has been made unemployed.

  Thursday, 8 September

  Good deed no. 251: took Cryssie for the first lesson of a new term.

  Friday, 9 September

  I am in major need of a kick up the backside as far as the Jam Jar Army goes. It seems like so much effort. I figure we stand at around £2,100, which is good. I’m not knocking it. It is 20 per cent of the target, but I need a major brainstorm and push to bring in another £8,000. If I had £8,000 I would just write a cheque and be very happy if I never saw another jam jar in my entire life.

  According to the latest official figures, around 25 per cent of adults volunteer formally once a month, with interest in volunteering growing (attributed to rising unemployment). I popped into the local Salvation Army shop on the high street of the local market town and asked about volunteering. It was very busy and very brightly lit. There were at least half a dozen elderly folk picking thoughtfully through the racks of clothes and buying second-hand cookery books. The manager was out, so I have to phone her tomorrow. Perhaps she will give me a trombone and try to recruit me to the Salvation Army. Perhaps you have to be able to play the trombone before they let you work there.

  Good deed no. 252: picked up jam jars from Gazette offices for counting.

  Saturday, 10 September

  If you have not done a good deed during the day, one of the hardest things is to make yourself think about someone else at exactly the moment you have put the children to bed, washed up, tidied up and are crawling hopefully towards the TV for an hour’s respite sprawled on the sofa before you go to bed. Yet at that exact moment, when in other circumstances your day is virtually done and you are utterly exhausted, you have to start thinking about someone other than yourself. Bizarrely, however, I have discovered that when you do make time for someone else, there is a return, and when you’re done, there is revival.

  I rang to check up on my Irish aunty who lost her husband earlier in the year, and she sounded positive and together and looking forward to a trip home to Ireland with her daughters. Aside from her two grown-up daughters, she has a son who is an engineer in America. Years ago, he was diagnosed with a very severe cancer but made it through. My aunt told me he used to wear a Padre Pio medal pinned to the inside of his shirt. I wonder if he smells roses?

  Good deed no. 253.

  Sunday, 11 September

  I have set the kids a challenge of a good deed a day for a week. They were not thrilled at the prospect – I am pretty sure my eldest rolled his eyes. An easy thing to do would be to be kind to the younger children who have just started school, I explained. Now all they have to do is remember.

  Good deed no. 254: opened the door out of a restaurant for a mother with a baby in a pushchair and a toddler.

  Monday, 12 September

  My neighbour down the lane who knows I am doing good deeds emailed saying he is away but he put his bin out and would I go ‘rescue it if it falls over in the wind’. We are at the tail end of Hurricane Katia, with winds forecast to be gusting furiously and weather reports warning that trees could be brought down. His bin is probably in Moscow right now and I am wondering who will rescue me if I fall over in the wind, but I’m going.

  Good deed no. 255.

  Tuesday, 13 September

  Good deed no. 256: took Lily’s
son after school while she drove the little one down for a hospital visit for her eyes.

  Wednesday, 14 September

  The hospice wanted me to write a piece for their magazine asking for jam jars to be returned. I wrote: ‘… the Jam Jar Army is about all of us – the shopkeeper who puts up a poster, the café owner who puts jars out on her tables, the little old lady in the retirement home with a jar filling up with tuppenny bits and the child who puts in his week’s pocket money rather than spend it on sweets.’ We have around £2,700. Only another £7,300 to go then, but the Jam Jar Army is about us, so I can stop worrying. Can’t I?

  Good deed no. 257.

  Thursday, 15 September

  Cryssie hadn’t read a novel this week when she arrived for her lesson. Instead she had read a Christian book described as a ‘Young person’s guide to knowing God’. Usually we have a chat about whatever novel she’s read the week before, but there was nowhere I could go with this one. A guide to knowing God? You have to have some self-belief to write that. To ‘know God’ – what does that even mean? If someone says to me they think they really know me, I think, ‘Honestly? You know nothing, mate’ and I’m just me. I bet it hacks God off when his faithful claim to know him. I bet it makes him want to beat on his white hairy chest and bellow, ‘I am Yahweh the Unknowable.’ Did Cryssie really read it? Or did she think it was the sort of book I would approve of her reading? It is certainly the sort of book her parents would approve of her reading, but their job is to lead her into faith; my job is to lead her into make-believe.