Every Christmas, My Mother Shared a Meal With a Stranger. This Year, Carrying On Her Tradition Changed My Life Forever

At that age, I didn’t push. Children accept answers the way they accept the weather. But as I grew older, that question followed me.

By the time I was fourteen, I asked again. This time, we were putting on our coats, getting ready to leave the apartment on Christmas Eve.

“Mom, who do you bring that food to every year?”

She handed me my gloves and kissed the top of my head. “Someone who could use a warm dinner, sweetheart.”

I didn’t realize then that this quiet act of kindness would eventually come back to me in a way I never expected.

We lived in a small town, the kind where everyone seems to know each other’s business unless you’re someone the world has decided not to notice. At the end of our street sat an old laundromat. It was open day and night, its buzzing fluorescent lights visible from blocks away. Inside, it always smelled like detergent, damp clothes, and the hum of machines that never seemed to rest.

That was where he stayed.

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