It began, as all good things should, with an apple pie.
Apple pies take work. They require thought. They’re a labor of love.
As the coronavirus knocked the world off-kilter and ground life to a unsettling halt, Kavita Schmid sat in her home in Streeterville and wondered, along with many Americans: “What can I do to help people?”
Her answer was to bake a pie. Then sample it to make sure it was good. (That is a crucial step, in my opinion.) Then bake another pie and deliver it to a neighbor, a psychiatrist who was still treating patients, working the front lines of a pandemic that was growing deadlier by the day.
Other isolated friends and neighbors soon received pies. And before long, Schmid, who lives near Northwestern Memorial Hospital, was baking pies for the doctors and nurses and interns working the emergency room.
“I worship the people who are working out there right now,” Schmid said. “They’re risking their lives and I just wanted to do something.”
If there’s a widely shared feeling in this moment of national tragedy and distress, it’s wanting to do something. We read about it and see it on the news every day: People are finding ways to help others or give something back to those putting themselves in harm’s way.
It comes in gestures big and small. Putting up signs to thank delivery people. Teachers driving by the homes of their students to show their connection isn’t lost. Workers raising money for a sick colleague. Celebrities raising money for relief efforts.
If there’s a light that breaks through this darkness, it bursts from the kindness of strangers. There’s no positive takeaway that balances out the horrid death toll, but there’s also nothing wrong with finding the good when the bad seems unbearable.
So we have people such as Schmid, who commit acts of kindness with a firm declaration: “It’s not about me.”
And it’s not. It’s about the people who need help, or a lift, or something as comforting as a slice of apple pie.
Schmid’s friend, Karen Fenske, recalled learning about the baking initiative: “We were texting one day and she said, ‘I was at the store this morning and I bought 10 pounds of green apples.’ She said, ‘I donated a pie. I’m baking pies and I want to give them to people who are helping everyone get through this, whether they be first responders or people on the front lines, doctors and nurses, the hospitals, the children’s hospitals.'”
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Pies were great, but Schmid started thinking bigger. She reached out to the manager of a nearby Benihana restaurant and asked if a meal delivery could be coordinated. Soon, Northwestern’s ER staff received Japanese lunches, courtesy of the restaurant.
Schmid asked the local Do-Rite Donuts to help. And doctors and nurses got doughnuts.
“She has been like a one-woman Tasmanian devil around here,” said Paige Croom, unit administrative secretary in Northwestern hospital’s emergency department. “She has been spreading the word as much as she can. I’ve been hearing from places all over who say, ‘We’d like to donate some food, we spoke with Kavita.’ “
And Schmid is just one of many.
“The generosity has been a little bit overwhelming,” Croom said. “Outside of the lunch and dinner offerings of Kavita, there have been so many acts of kindness shown to the ER, the doctors and residents. One doctor told me that she’s been thanked more in the last few months that she has her whole career.”
It matters. Croom said: “The appreciation that has been shown has really boosted the morale and let everyone know that what they’re doing, it’s for a purpose and it’s recognized.”
The kindness, too, is recognized. It’s recognized by the parents who see teachers going an extra mile for their kids. It’s recognized by seniors under lockdown who have friends and family calling them more often.
It matters, this good in the midst of bad.
Schmid told me about her late father, an immigrant from India who brought his family to Chicago in the 1970s: “He always did something, whether it was helping a neighbor or friends, sending money back to India for education for his sibling. He would give back and not expect a reward.”
Not long after she started on her apple pie mission, Schmid was walking home from a delivery at a medical clinic and found a $100 bill on the sidewalk. She took it as a sign that she was doing the right thing. Then she went to the store and spent it on ingredients for more pies.
I think her father would approve.
And I think we should be grateful for everyone out there finding ways to help. With pies and thoughtfulness and hard work and love.
It’s the light that breaks the darkness.
It’s the light we so badly need.