My husband died six weeks ago, and while cleaning his workshop, I found a box filled with children’s shoes, ranging from sizes 2 through 7. We never had children, so I couldn’t understand why every pair had a child’s name and a date attached to it.I took the shoes to the store listed on the receipt. When the owner learned I was his wife, she pulled out a binder and explained that for nine years, my husband had quietly bought shoes for every new foster child who came through the local shelter. She had kept records because she eventually gave him a special discount.There were forty-one names in that binder—forty-one children, forty-one pairs of shoes.

My husband had never told me about them, and he had never given the shelter his name. He simply wanted children who had already lost so much to have something that belonged to them.Then I noticed the little sticky notes tucked inside each pair. The store owner smiled and explained, “He wanted the kids to write their own names inside, so they’d always know those shoes were truly theirs.”