A woman who taught for many years died last winter. At her memorial service someone asked who felt like they were one of her favorites. A hundred hands shot up.

A friend told me why she loved her. Sixty years ago when she was bouncing from foster home to foster home it was hard to belong. People dutifully took her in, like a series of step mothers, but she wasn't wanted. Adored. She was an extra in a home with many mouths to feed. One day she shuffled in to the kindergarten classroom and the teacher looked deeply into her eyes. 

"You need a hug!" she said while wrapping her arms around the child. The little girl softened in her embrace, like butter on a summer day. The ache of trying to be good enough to not be sent away was a heavy load for someone who could not yet tie her shoes.

As chance would have it sixty years later the teacher suffered from congestive heart failure. A brood of caretakers arrived each morning and evening, including the little girl from long ago. 

"Her strength was waning, and she seemed so small in her hospital bed. And lonely. So I just crawled in beside her and gave her a long hug. It felt so good."

Six decades between the two embraces. A lifetime. What fills me with wonder even more than the miracle of two people who reached out to one another in kindness, is that the lines between giver and receiver are so easily blurred.