Of Simpletons and Blessings

I was walking back from the makolet when I stranger asked to borrow my phone. She was a secular lady waiting at the bus stop with her preteen granddaughter. They wanted to call the bus number to see when their bus would be arriving. 

I wasn't in the mood to help them. My bags were heavy and it was hot out. I wanted to go home and unpack everything, clean up and do whatever else was on my to-do list for that day.

But, I figured, it would only be a minute and I had a phone and I would certainly want someone to lend a phone to me if I were ever to be in a similar situation...

So I gave it to her, and waited. She called and informed her granddaughter that the bus would be arriving in three minutes. 

As she handed the phone back to me, she smiled.

"Todah raba. Yesh lach children?"

I looked at her, confused. I understood what she said, but was thrown off by the one English word she threw in there. 

"You have baby?" She asked again, this time pantomiming holding an infant.

"Oh, no." 

Before I had the chance to tell her I was only married for two months, she spoke again.

"Well I give you a bracha that because you gave me your phone you should have children!"

I smiled. "Amen!"

We parted as unlikely friends; her hugging her granddaughter, and me still smiling.

***

I feel like there are a lot of points that could be taken out of this incident, but the one that stands out most to me that we can give more than we think. I don't know if that woman remembers what she told me, but I certainly do. She could have said "thank you" and left it that. It would have sufficed and I would have been grateful for her thanks. Only she decided to go a bit beyond that and gave me a bracha as well.  

She took a simple moment and decided to make it beautiful.

And I'm so grateful that she did. 

We often think that we are too simple to actually give a bracha to another.We feel like that's something a bit beyond us. We think "I'm not a gadol, I'm not a tzaddekes, I don't know what to do or say...''

What I learned from this woman is that it isn't beyond us at all. 

The gemara quotes Rabbi Chanina saying "One should never regard the blessing of an ordinary person as light in your eyes" (Megillah 15a). 

Every blessing we say has power.

It's something we all can do.