I was standing in line at my favorite ice cream store, thinking about the pleasures of coconut mounds ice cream, when a young woman ahead of me in line asked me a question. “What’s your favorite flavor?” I said “coconut mounds”. She said, “What size do you usually get?” I said, “a single scoop on a sugar cone”. She then turned to the clerk and  loudly announced “I’m paying for this lady’s ice cream”. I thanked her profusely and went on my way.

This was a different experience for me. I always think of myself as a generous person. “No, you go first”, I say. I sometimes take it to an absurd level. For example,while waiting in line at my local grocery store. I usually have a pretty full cart and pity the person behind me with one or two items. “Please go ahead.” “Are you sure?” “Yes, of course!” Another person comes along and I say the same thing. I don’t have the expectation that someone will do something for me. It’s surprising if someone does and it makes my day.

When this young women paid for my ice cream, I thought, why is she doing this? I think the public announcement of her generosity  threw me off. The concept of pay it forward is an expression for describing the beneficiary of a good deed repaying it to others instead of to the original benefactor. The concept is old, but the phrase may have been coined by Lily Hardy Hammond in her 1916 book In the Garden of Delight.

They say it’s easier to be on the receiving end, but is it? I definitely prefer to give than to receive. I like that satisfaction of secretly knowing the restaurant server will be pleased to get a handsome tip or the bus driver at the airport who is shuttling disgruntled travelers who are often in a hurry, will appreciate that someone remembered them. Sometimes I think I give to these folks to counteract the knowledge that many people think, ‘well, they’re just doing their job”. My parents and especially my grandmother Alice, always set the example of helping others, never passing up a person with a hand out.

Paying it forward, it seems, is a quiet act, not an announcement of how generous a person is. A quiet act, where both parties are satisfied and the gesture is motivation to pay it forward. It has been described as an obligation to do three good deeds for others in response to a good deed that one receives.

And, speaking of ice cream, one of my favorite times  that I remember as a child was making ice cream with my Uncle Ken, Granny and Dad and the rest of my family. We would gather in my grandparent’s backyard on Coe Avenue in San Jose and  churn homemade ice cream with a hand crank, wooden ice cream maker.

San Jose in the 50’s and 60’s was not the Silicon Valley of today. It was still a wide open valley filled with apricot trees,cots my dad called them, walnuts and other fruit trees. Both of my parents worked in the canneries in the summer canning peaches, cots and other foods.

Granny and Dad’s backyard was an oasis in the hot summer months, with its giant ginkgo tree, brick patio and intricate succulent garden, tended by Granny. Uncle Ken kept an aviary in the backyard and took care of the small orchard . A perfect place to make ice cream. So here it is, the recipe we knew and loved, Granny’s strawberry ice cream and a few others, just for good measure.

Pay it forward.