It’s a tale as old as time: The Lemonade Stand. We are grateful for our small city streets, miniature merchants on many a street corner and iced cold lemonade for all. I read somewhere that one way to keep flexing your kindness muscles is to stop at every lemonade stand you see. Buy a cup and one for a friend, with an extra few coins for the pot. I try to travel with a couple of dollar bills tucked in my pocket in the season of lemonade. Upon coming across a stand one penniless afternoon, I was delighted to be told they accepted Venmo. So, even as time moves on and technology updates us all, in Melrose at least, the charm of childhood lemonade stands remain. They are simply one in many small town nods that make up the fiber of our community.
You can imagine our surprise when we received a recent donation of $40 from the Arsenault kids and their friend. Dad Chris included a note with the donation that read “the kids made a lemonade stand and ask for donations to be contributed to the MelroseKind initiative. They hope this helps others!”
Unsolicited donations are pretty amazing, but when they come from those barely squeaking into the double digits of life, those dollars mean even more. I followed up with an email to Dad and he sent me additional information about these young kindness warriors. Tucker is 8 and Wesley is 5 and they attend Roosevelt Elementary School. Along with their 11 year old friend Ben, they got the idea to sell lemonade one hot late-summer day. They heard about MelroseKind from Ben’s mom. Dad Chris explained that Tucker hopes the money helps other kids in his community to purchase school supplies. Wesley is simply interested in any kind gesture and Ben likes helping others. Each lemonade concessionaire spoke of how good giving to MelroseKind made them feel and they hope doing so will encourage others to do the same.
Wesley shared a story about seeing a big-brother-neighbor help his little brother throw trash away in a trash can so that it wouldn’t litter our streets. Ben shared a story about helping a neighbor with their cats when the neighbor couldn’t take care of them. Some pretty amazing kindness warriors in the making, we believe.
When we asked the kids what they do when they are not spending time selling lemonade to make the world a better place, all three told us they enjoy playing a variety of sports and having fun with their teammates. We can only imagine the kindness and empathy they share on the field.
MelroseKind is a non-profit organization that continues to grow because of the kindness and generosity of our community. Every new initiative has been greeted by our friends and neighbors with open arms. We are overwhelmed by the love we feel when we look at the Kindness Porch overflowing with diaper donations or when we get an email from a Daisy Troop leader asking for a kindness mission. We continue to plan for bigger and kinder events in the future, including a structured pen pal program, a kindness movie viewing, inspirational speakers and doubling the donations we make to local charities.
We are proud of Wesley, Tucker, and Ben for recognizing that kindness is a super power like none other and that giving of ourselves makes the world a better place.
WesleyKind. TuckerKind. BenKind. MelroseKind. We are us because you are you. ♥️
