In their deep grief, Ann and Howard search for comfort and compassion after their son, Scotty, dies on his eighth birthday after being hit by a car while walking to school. As they grapple with this loss, Ann and Howard don’t glean much comfort from the people they initially reach out to, like their families, Scotty’s friendly doctor, or even each other. Instead, they find comfort from unlikely strangers and experiences—most notably, sharing hot rolls with an irritable baker in the middle of the night. With this, the story suggests that “small, good things”—like having conversation with strangers, or sharing a meal—are simple but significant sources of comfort in times of sadness and shouldn’t be overlooked.
Throughout the story, the people Ann expects to get comfort from often fall short of her expectations. For instance, Ann and Howard stay with Scotty by themselves in the hospital, without anyone else in their family to support them. After they leave the hospital, Ann calls her relatives to tell them Scotty has died, but these conversations are brief. In other words, Ann doesn’t turn to her family, who seem to be the most natural choice, for comfort. Ann and Howard are also unable to share their emotions with each other throughout the ordeal. They deal with the situation together, talking to doctors and determining who will feed the dog, but they never really confide in each other. Ann admits that she hadn’t even thought of Howard as part of the tragedy at first—she thought only of how it was affecting herself and Scotty. Doctors, too, prove unable to give the comfort Ann and Howard crave. When they first get to the hospital, Ann and Howard turn Scotty’s doctor, Dr. Francis, whom they initially judge as competent and friendly, as someone who can bring them compassion and guidance. But throughout the story, he continually makes empty promises that Scotty will be alright and that there’s nothing to worry about, even as the parents become increasingly frightened.
Ann and Howard soon find that small kindnesses and conversations with strangers bring them the most comfort. For instance, Ann expected to connect most with Dr. Francis, but instead, it’s the baker who made Scotty’s birthday cake—a person whom Ann initially disliked, considering him cold, disinterested, and unfriendly—who ends up giving them the most compassion and comfort. At the end of the story, when Ann and Howard confront the baker about continually calling them because they failed to pick up their son’s birthday cake, what started as a conflict becomes a moment of connection. When they tell the baker that their son is dead, he immediately softens and has compassion for them, and offers them food and sympathy. Though they came to the bakery to angrily confront the baker, Ann and Howard spend most of the night after Scotty’s death grieving and eating with the baker. He makes a space for them in his shop, shares his own struggles with them, and gives them homemade food, doing for them what a family would often do in a time of grief.
That the parents’ presuppositions of the doctor and baker are swiftly dismantled (and even inverted) in the story suggests that support and compassion can be found in unlikely places and people. Ultimately, Ann and Howard discover throughout their ordeal that it’s hard to tell which people will provide comfort and compassion from their outward appearances.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Compassion and Comfort ThemeTracker
Compassion and Comfort Quotes in A Small, Good Thing
She was a mother and thirty-three years old, and it seemed to her that everyone, especially someone the baker’s age—a man old enough to be her father—must have children who’d gone through this special time of cakes and birthday parties. There must be that between them, she thought. But he was abrupt with her—not rude, just abrupt. She gave up trying to make friends with him.
“He’s all right,” the doctor said. “Nothing to shout about, he could be better, I think. But he’s all right. Still, I wish he’d wake up. He should wake up pretty soon.” The doctor looked at the boy again. “We’ll know some more in a couple of hours, after the results of a few more tests are in. But he’s all right, believe me, except for the hairline fracture of the skull. He does have that.”
“...I’ve been praying,” he said.
“That’s good,” she said. For the first time, she felt they were together in it, this trouble. She realized with a start that, until now, it had only been happening to her and to Scotty. She hadn’t let Howard into it, though he was there and needed all along. She felt glad to be his wife.
They both stared out at the parking lot. They didn’t say anything. But they seemed to feel each other’s insides now, as though the worry had made them transparent in a perfectly natural way.
She wanted to talk more with these people who were in the same kind of waiting she was in. She was afraid, and they were afraid. They had that in common. She would have liked to have said something else about the accident, told them more about Scotty, that it had happened on the day of his birthday, Monday, and that he was still unconscious. Yet she didn’t know how to begin. She stood looking at them without saying anything more.
Then he began to talk. They listened carefully. Although they were tired and in anguish, they listened to what the baker had to say. They nodded when the baker began to speak of loneliness, and of the sense of doubt and limitation that had come to him in his middle years. He told them what it was like to be childless all these years. To repeat the days with the ovens endlessly full and endlessly empty. The party food, the celebrations he’d worked over. Icing knuckle-deep. The tiny wedding couples stuck into cakes. Hundreds of them, no, thousands by now. Birthdays. Just imagine all those candles burning.
