Kindness and Compassion
What This Theme Explores
Kindness and Compassion in Counting by 7s asks how small, imperfect acts of care can become the scaffolding that holds a person—and a community—together after catastrophe. It examines how empathy, offered without expectation, can bridge differences, transform bystanders into allies, and redefine what a family can be for Willow Chance. The novel suggests that compassion is not a singular heroic moment but an accumulative practice, a habit of attention and responsibility that spreads from one person to the next. In tracing that spread, the book argues that human beings grow by giving and receiving care, even when they don’t yet know how.
How It Develops
At first, kindness in Willow’s life is intimate and contained: the everyday devotion of her adoptive parents, Roberta and Jimmy Chance. When tragedy ruptures that safety, empathy surfaces in halting, improvised gestures—a teenager’s quick-thinking lie, a mother’s open arms, a counselor’s clumsy attempts to show up. As these acts multiply through Mai Nguyen, Pattie Nguyen, Dell Duke, and Jairo Hernandez, the novel shifts from survival to solidarity: kindness becomes a shared ethic rather than a series of accidents.
By the end, what began as emergency aid turns into a sustained network of mutual care—legal guardianship, daily routines, and a garden built together. Compassion evolves from instinct to intention, from isolated acts to a communal identity, forming a true found family. In that process, the characters learn that care is not only a response to loss but a way of living that creates durable belonging and human connection.
Key Examples
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Mai’s Protective Lie: When police arrive with devastating news, Mai—who barely knows Willow—instantly claims closeness to protect her from the foster system. This impulsive invention is a moral choice: she assumes responsibility before she has a plan, proving that compassion often begins with stepping into discomfort to shield someone vulnerable (Chapter 18).
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Pattie’s Unconditional Welcome: Despite limited means, Pattie recognizes Willow’s grief with unhesitating embrace. Her response reframes kindness as stewardship rather than charity—she offers stability, privacy, and dignity, demonstrating that the most meaningful help is practical, consistent, and free of judgment.
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Dell’s Clumsy Kindness: Dell’s early outreach is awkward—bringing his cat to his office as a “surprise” reveals how inexperienced he is at caring for others (Chapter 10). Later, buying every variety of sunflower seed for Willow shows growth: he learns to translate feeling into thoughtful action that speaks to what matters to her (Chapter 40).
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Jairo’s Reciprocal Care: After Willow alerts him to a suspicious mole, Jairo changes his life—and then rearranges it to support hers. His free rides and steady presence show compassion as reciprocity: being cared for becomes the reason, and the resource, to care for someone else (Chapter 14).
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The Community Garden Project: Henry Pollack’s donation of plants, tools, and labor extends kindness beyond the immediate circle, transforming private grief into public remembrance. The shared work of cultivation becomes a ritual of collective healing, where everyone’s hands contribute to Willow’s future (Chapter 53).
Character Connections
Pattie Nguyen grounds the novel’s compassion in action. She does not romanticize generosity; she organizes it—housing, meals, rides, forms, schedules. Drawing on her own history of displacement, she understands that real kindness is infrastructure, and she builds it around Willow without waiting to be asked.
Mai Nguyen embodies protective, decisive empathy. Her split-second lie becomes the novel’s hinge, but she sustains that courage with persistence—advocating for Willow, coordinating help, and translating between adults. Through Mai, compassion reads as loyalty in motion: she keeps choosing Willow, day after day.
Dell Duke undergoes the most visible transformation. Initially self-involved and performatively helpful, he learns that care is measured by reliability, not sentiment. Rescuing Cheddar and tending to Willow’s interests mark his shift from convenience to commitment, illustrating how compassion can be learned through practice.
Jairo Hernandez models how kindness circulates. Being seen by Willow prompts him to see himself—and then others—more clearly. His steady support and eventual role in guardianship show compassion rippling outward, changing both the giver and the receiver.
Willow Chance begins as the primary recipient of care, but grief teaches her to notice other people’s needs with new depth. Tutoring Quang-ha Nguyen, repairing Dell’s computer, and envisioning the garden reveal her move from surviving to stewarding, as she channels loss into purposeful acts that strengthen the whole group.
Symbolic Elements
The Garden: Transforming a sterile courtyard into a thriving ecosystem literalizes the book’s belief in communal care as cultivation. Each donation and hour of labor becomes soil for growth and renewal, proving that compassion does not merely soothe—it builds, root by root, a future that didn’t exist before.
Cheddar the Cat: Cheddar embodies fragile dependence and the moral weight of response. Dell’s initial neglect and later rescue trace his ethical awakening; for Willow, Cheddar offers uncomplicated affection, reminding her—and the group—that care can be simple, daily, and profoundly stabilizing.
Food and Shared Meals: Pattie’s cooking is care you can hold. Eating together at the red Formica table turns strangers into kin, ritualizing the shift from ad hoc help to a household; nourishment becomes the language through which love is delivered and received.
Contemporary Relevance
In an era of isolation, gatekeeping, and transactional relationships, the novel reasserts that community is made by ordinary people taking responsibility for one another. It challenges readers to expand their circles, to practice everyday solidarity, and to recognize that generosity scales—what starts as a single act can become a culture of care. Counting by 7s argues that the most effective social safety net is often local, relational, and stubbornly humane, and that the work of compassion belongs to all of us.
Essential Quote
Pattie saw grief.
Her eyes focused on a version of her own young self, and so many other children in Vietnam who grew up without parents, some abandoned because of their ethnicity, others because of tragedy.
And her arms reached out wide.
In this moment, compassion is recognition first—Pattie reads Willow’s pain through the lens of her own—and action immediately after. The passage crystallizes the book’s ethic: empathy becomes meaningful when it moves the body toward another person, creating safety before solutions. As a hinge between backstory and new beginnings, it inaugurates the household that will hold Willow together (Chapter 19).