Some years ago Oprah Winfrey, the hottest talk show hostess of the day, encouraged her viewers to commit “random acts of kindness.” The idea was that a small gesture of kindness could go a long way to brighten someone’s day. So for about a week, people were putting quarters in expired meters for cars parked beyond their allotted time and paying for the stranger in the car behind them at the tollbooths.

Here in Shanghai, where parking meters and tollbooths are few, it would be a hard example to follow. But as a receiver of a special act of kindness that made an indelible imprint on my memory, I can vouch for the wisdom of such advice.

I was 10-years old, in that stage of childhood when I felt everybody was against me. Parents and teachers alike seemed to have time only for finding my character flaws. Be it the way I fidgeted while waiting for the bus, or the way I sat unladylike on the chair, I could expect to be scolded at whatever the task at hand or the time of day. Whatever answers I could muster to simple questions such as “did you do your homework?” or “why didn’t you make the bed” seemed always to be the wrong ones. I was sad and sullen, convinced that I was not the child that my family wanted.

Visiting my sister was a diversion, yet a lonely experience. She lived in Vermont, in a town small enough to have a state fair where the main attractions were the cow-milking competition and the apple pie baking contest. Since I didn’t live there year-round, there were few friends to play with. The back lot of the restaurant where she worked was my usual playground whenever I visited.

In its hay-day, when the building was new and full of tenants and the restaurant full, 30 cars might have fit in the paved lot. But that must have been decades ago and by the time I used it as my stomping grounds the cement had flaked off, broken through by overgrown weeds and the weight of the cars that used to be parked there. A few of them still used the lot, parked here and there, owned by the leftover tenants of the half-empty building.

It was a hot July day and I was wandering the lot aimlessly, looking for a new patch of scraggly weeds that I may have missed. There were the usual gum wrappers and empty beer cans, hardly interesting finds. At one end of the lot was the narrow door to the back of the old apartment building, looking like it had seen better days.

Next to the door, by the wall was a cluster of weeds I had never seen before. Over a feet off the ground, it had pod-like growths with priggly skin. I bend down to take a closer look and poked at it with a stick to investigate. I became so engrossed in my study that I did not hear footsteps approaching. I looked up with a start – oh no, too late – the dreaded adult was only an arm reach away. Caught in the act, which I were sure would anger an adult in some way, I stood in a pouting silence as she asked the dreaded question favored by all people over four feet tall, “What are you doing?” I mumbled a reply that even I couldn’t hear, but her eyes followed my stick and realized what I was up to.

I had expected to be admonished about something. I thought she would tell me to leave well enough alone and go home. But instead of the usual barrage of the many ways why this activity might have violated some adult law, this lady bends down and joins me in my research. I ventured a sideway glanced and saw the kind look in her eyes. Smiling as if she knew a secret, she plucked one of the many prickly pods with her hands and began peeling it like a banana. “This is a milkweed,” she said. As the peel came off, I saw that inside there was a cluster of cotton-like strands with tiny brown seeds attached. “Watch,” she said as she separated each strand one by one and blew on it at the same time.

Fluffy, soft wisps of white puffs drifted upwards and off in all directions. White clouds surrounded me. Little fluffs kissed my face and my arms. A shower of cotton softness rained on my face. I gasped and laughed in wonderment. Putting my hands up I tried to catch the tiny white puffs before they fell to the ground.

I looked back to where the lady had stood and before I could muddle a “thank you,” she waved and disappeared into the building. I stood looking at the door that she disappeared into. There were many lessons that I learned from this nameless lady on this sunny day in July but for the moment I was caught up in the beauty of the moment and spent the rest of the afternoon peeling open every milkweed in the lot.

It was not until much later, when memory of these brief few minutes had replayed from my memory about a hundred times that I knew the affect of her kindness. For I know now as an adult what that little 10-year old did not know then, that the power of this moment lay not in the one day it brightened up, but in the kindness this stranger showed to a little girl wandering alone in a garbage-strewn lot.

Through countless difficult moments of the years in-between, those times when real or imaginary unkindness committed by friends or strangers threatened to make me feel lost and alone, I would remember this nameless woman and the day she blew on the clouds and made the heavens swoop down to embrace me. I would pull the memory of this kindness from some hidden bin of my brain, like a powerful genie waiting for release, to give evidence that my presence alone had touched someone; someone who had thought enough of me to take the time and demonstrate a magical beauty hidden in an ugly pod.

I’m sure that this lady does not remember having stopped one hot July day to demonstrate the beauty of a wild milkweed to a girl-child in distress. But her five minutes have lasted me a lifetime and one small act of kindness has grown massive in proportion. And so I have come to realize that one of the paradoxes of life is that sometimes what is small holds the greatest power, and an encounter of minutes can alter a perception for life.