By Denise Bacon
Fran Keeler, a “long life experienced” resident of Centennial, had a wonderful surprise recently. She retrieved much more than her usual newspaper from her front porch that morning.
A colourful gift bag chockablock with many of her favourite things was there for Fran. She has been following the Public Health guidelines around self isolation and staying around home. When not gardening, Fran has been tearing through her crossword and word search puzzles to stay active. This gift bag arrived just in time as she had conquered most of her puzzles. Fran relished pulling out each of the special gifts from that bag, including puzzles, a wind chime, a dessert plate and coffee mug, a butterfly wind chime and delicious goodies. Fran was thrilled and puzzled, too, to read the card from “Your Fairies, Trixie and her daughter Pixie.”
No sooner than Fran settled in after the excitement of finding this special gift, her doorbell rang. To her surprise, Fran saw a young girl running back to a car that drove away quickly. Before she could fully process what was going on, Fran noticed that there was another gift bag left on her porch! This bag, too, was full of goodies that Fran would treasure – more puzzles, lovely toiletries, tea, cookies, lots of chocolate and “Girls Night Out” wine! This card read “Hope you are keeping well! From your Wine Fairies, a mother and daughter team.”
Fran was completely over the moon, tickled pink and ever so thankful for the kindness of strangers, er, fairies, as she reflected on how lucky she is to live in this wonderful community where neighbours care for each other. The packages brought smile upon smile to Fran who loved telling her story about the fairies to a friend over a glass of Girls Night Out wine – at a distance, of course.
Fran regrets that she could not thank the “fairies” personally and that she could not make a donation to help them to continue their good work.
Yes, Fran, there are fairies!
Corollary to Fran’s Story
This writer was able to track down one of Fran’s fairies to get the inside scoop. There are Facebook groups made up of people who want to spread joy, particularly during this COVID-19 isolation period. Wine Fairies 2.0 is the group that’s responsible for the special gifts for Fran. The fairy who spoke with me under the promise of anonymity lives in the neighbourhood. She is a young mother of two children who learned the gift of giving from her parents and she is instilling this value in her own children. This fairy enjoys selecting meaningful presents as she puts together each gift bag. She happily spends her own money to bring this “gift of love” to others. The fairy said that she gets a great deal of joy out of giving her gift bags and is thankful that she is in the position to be able to give at this time.
Yes, neighbours, there are fairies!