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I placed my hand over my belly, feeling the soft, rhythmic flutter of my baby’s movements beneath my ribs. It was a silent conversation between us. In that moment, I made a solemn promise to the life I was carrying. I promised that I would teach them the value of the “small” gesture. I promised that we would not let the world make us hard or indifferent. And I promised that someday, when the silver in my hair matched that of the woman on the bus, I would find another young mother-to-be and pass this locket along once more.
Kindness, I realized, is the only thing in this world that grows when it is given away. It is a quiet, persistent force that weaves through the chaos of our lives, stitching together the stories of strangers into a tapestry of shared humanity. As I stepped off the bus at my own stop, the weight in my bones felt lighter. I walked home with a locket in my pocket and a legacy in my heart, ready to face the road ahead—one gentle act at a time.
