My Mom still wears the same 20-year-old shirt she bought for $3 at the discount store, and the only time she owns anything new is when her children forcibly purchase them for her, but one thing will never change: she always gives. ALWAYS. 

And I don’t mean she only gives to the Catholic Church’s Sunday donation basket, even though she is a devout Catholic and regularly tithes. She gives whether she’s in a Buddhist temple, a mosque, at the Vietnamese orphanage, at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, or even the public bathroom along the road that depends on the donations of travelers to maintain.

If there is a donation box, you can count on Mom to slip in a few dollars - what little fixed retirement income she has, or, when she was working, what little minimum wage she was earning from working as a caregiver and restaurant kitchen prepper.

She gives quietly, without fanfare, without any virtue signaling, without any self-righteous announcement to the world. Everywhere we went, if we suddenly realized that we had lost Mom somewhere behind us, it was most likely that she had found a donation box, and was fumbling through her purse to find change.

On her birthday, she always asks me for money. And I know where that money is going. Probably a charity for natural disaster victims or an orphanage somewhere. And I’ll appease her request, but I’ll also order a physical gift that she can use, because otherwise, she would never spend a dime on herself.

And even though I can’t say that I have reached even close to Mom’s level of saintly selflessness, I will end the piece with this nugget of food for thoughts: the greatest heroes among us are not loud, not flashy, and you’ll miss them if you blink. But if you stop and pay attention, you might just notice the invisible red capes fluttering over a $3 discount store shirt, or a worn out pair of rubber sandals.