Single mom breaks into tears after stranger gifted her $6 along with a scribbled message
Getting a compliment for their parenting might mean the world to a parent. A mom got that on a random train ride when a stranger left a note and $6 for her as he got off at his station. The woman, Sammie Welch, was quite surprised when she read it and wanted to reach out to the stranger to thank him for his kind and special message, as reported by The Guardian. Welch was travelling on the train to Plymouth with her 3-year-old son, Rylan, when the incident took place.
The man handed Welch a 5 Euro note ($6) to have a drink on him and wrote a message calling her "a credit to her generation." The handwritten note the man gave her while getting down read, "Have a drink on me. You are a credit to your generation. Polite and teaching the little boy good manners." He continued, "P.S. I have a daughter your age, someone did the same for her once. Hope when she has children, she is as good a mother as you. Have a lovely evening." The single mom was moved to tears when she received the message from the kind stranger, per the Daily Mail. "People look at you and judge you every day when you’re a single mum, but getting that note made me feel special and proud. That might sound silly, but all I’m trying to do is make a better life for my son."
The man simply signed off the note with a "man on the train at the table with glasses and a hat." The woman was hoping to find him and thank him in person, as she didn't get a chance to do that when they were on the train. "He shows there are still good people out there and I want him to know I am truly grateful. We definitely do need more people like him – the world would be a great place." Welch shared that she couldn't believe what had happened and read the note about ten to twenty times. She was surprised that a complete stranger had decided to do something so kind for her. "I didn’t know what I had done to make him write what he did. I was so moved, I was overwhelmed. It meant so much to me."
The mom was on a five-and-a-half-hour journey with her toddler and it also involved changing trains. Such a journey can be quite challenging to take on with a young child. "He was good and there was no crying. It was quite exhausting for him, but then he fell asleep with his head on my knee. The train was quite busy. A couple of people got on and were standing up and I offered to put him on my knee so they could have a seat," Welch recounted. She had not noticed the man on the train until he handed her the note before getting off at Bristol. "As he walked by, he tapped me on the shoulder and said, 'I think you’ve dropped this out of your bag,'" and gave her a note.
The man had been on the train with the mom and son for an hour and a half after they got on in Birmingham. "It really shocked me that there was money with the note, especially as money is tight for a lot of people these days." Welch ended up putting the money in her son's savings account. The woman had moved to Plymouth from Crewe, Cheshire, at that time, where she worked as an IT Technician. She was returning home after visiting her sister when the incident happened. She posted the note along with a message on Facebook, hoping to find the person.