Mable Anne delivers smiles

Look out Opie, Mable Anne is coming through! This week, Mable Anne dressed up as a UPS driver and delivered a package full of smiles and giggles to AHC Lewis County.

Since the pandemic has left residents of nursing homes unable to have visitors come inside, Mable Anne and her mom took it upon themselves to make sure residents had at least one visitor outside.

Every Monday since the pandemic, Mable Anne has dressed up according to a theme that her mom, Ashley Heath, has cleverly constructed.

"When I first decided I wanted to do something in March, this book came to mind," said Heath, referring to a book called Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge by Mem Fox.

In the book, the little boy lives next to a farm on which a group of older people live. Wilfrid makes friends with each person, but especially a woman named Nancy Alison Delacourt Cooper (because she had four names just like him).

Wilfrid becomes troubled when he overhears his parents say that poor Mrs. Nancy had lost her memory. In an effort to find what Mrs. Nancy had lost, he asks everyone he can find what a memory is. Some say a memory is something warm, others say something sad, something that makes you laugh, and so on.

The little boy gathers items in his home that make him feel all of these emotions and brings them to Mrs. Nancy. In going through the items, she regains some of her lost memories of sweet times, sad times and those when she laughed.

"I decided that I wanted Mable Anne to be just as kind as the boy in the book," Heath said.

This week, as Mable Anne raced up to residents' windows to deliver their packages in a timely fashion, she spread a few smiles, laughs and a lot of kindness.