A special habit of my mom’s was getting to know the everyday strangers in her life. Who are these ‘strangers’? They are the people we commonly see in our day-to-day lives, but whom we may give little attention to, be them grocery store clerks or waiters or repairmen. We may view them as people providing us with a service; accordingly, we might make small talk with them, exchanging a polite “How are you?” or “Beautiful day, isn’t it?” but our interaction is usually brief and surface-level. Often, once the service is provided, so ends the relationship.

Please don’t get me wrong; there’s nothing wrong with this. We all have different personalities and priorities to balance that shape our interactions with people. It’s simply special and worth recognizing that my mom has regularly pursued these kinds of relationships.

I never talked specifically to my mom about her thought process behind this, but I think it boils down to the combination of her wonderful social capabilities and her deep value for people. Over the years, I’ve seen many instances of her making a real effort to befriend everyday strangers, and the outcomes have been pretty meaningful.

A few examples that have stuck out:

When I moved to London, my mom spent two weeks helping me find a flat and getting me moved in. The landlords told us that they had a full-time handyman on staff, Kerwin, and that he could help with minor jobs and repairs. There were a few things I needed help with, such as putting up a mirror and installing a towel rack, that my mom said she would get arranged with Kerwin while I was at work. One day, I came home to my flat all made up, and my mom told me that Kerwin had come by — and what a nice time she’d had getting to know him. While he’d tended to my flat, they’d talked about their faiths, Kerwin’s family, his move over to the UK — significant, below-the-surface topics. After my mom left London, Kerwin specially came by to tell me how kind my mom was and to see how I was settling in. He regularly went out of his way to help me, even once stopping by to see how I was doing after learning I’d been under the weather. He was so impacted by my mom’s effort to get to know him during my early days in that flat, and he reciprocated this with kindness towards me during the year I lived there.

Then there was this one time, many years ago, when my mom befriended an air hostess. (Unfortunately I remember so few of the details, as this must have been 15+ years ago.) What I do recall is that on our flight my mom got to know the air hostess who was tending to us, and that there were a lot of smiles and laughter involved. Towards the end of the flight, the air hostess gifted my mom with a hefty bag of those mini alcohol bottles that they serve on the plane. In the span of a few hours, my mom had made such an impression on this air hostess that she felt moved to give my mom a parting gift. Some well-deserved booze for my mom, I should add, after having to fly for hours with three restless kids all under age 10!

And then not too long along ago, I witnessed a similar experience with the woman at our local fruit stand, from which my parents have long been buying the occasional box of strawberries. It’s effectively a small drive-through just off the road; you tell the woman what you want, and she hands the fruit to you through the car window. The time that I went recently, I was driving my mom’s car and wearing sunglasses, so the lady at the stand must have thought I was my mom. I asked for a box of strawberries, and she said with a smile, “Normally $10, but just for you $8.” Because she thought I was my mom, I ended up getting a nice discount. I told my dad later, and he said that he’d never been given a discount from her before! But my mom got special treatment, and in connecting the dots I can infer it will have been because of her efforts to extend warmth to this woman (who speaks little English I might add, thereby limiting their communication), each time she pulled over to buy strawberries.

I’ve seen other results of my mom getting to know the everyday strangers in her life — ranging from our house cleaner recently texting me that she misses my mom to discovering that our home warranty salesperson gave my mom free service vouchers over the years. Of course, the point of this lesson is not that we should expect all-star treatment if we start making friends with our local barista or gas station attendant. But sometimes this just happens to be a bonus of making the extra effort with people who are ultimately very appreciative.

Other times, there is no tangible benefit, and that doesn’t change anything. I know that receiving freebies or heightened care has never been the motivation for my mom. Special treatment or lack thereof aside, these examples do show us that making the extra bit of effort to get to know the people in our everyday lives can really impact them in a positive way. All of us have been everyday strangers in some capacity before, and therefore may relate firsthand to this.

From her actions, I think that to my mom, the everyday stranger was never really a stranger. Rather, just a friend in the making.