At Checkers, our big locally-owned grocery store the other day, the check-out lines snaked across the frozen food section with six or so of us in each line, spread apart because of the pandemic. There were only three lanes open when the floor manager came to the lane beside mine and signalled the man in front of me, a 60ish fellow in Chief’s jersey who I had been running into, first in produce, then in eggs, and later in the baking supplies aisle. He scooted over to check out in the new lane.
But then the floor manager, a young woman who didn’t seem to have a lot of confidence in her decisions, suddenly decided she shouldn’t be checking people out, so she closed the register she just opened. I signaled for the guy in the Chief’s jersey to get back in front of me rather than go the end of a growing line of socially-distanced shoppers.
A minute later, he turned around, smiled, and said to me, “What’s your favorite candy bar? I want to buy it for you to thank you.” I said thank you but no thank you, patting my stomach. “Me too,” he said, patting his stomach, and we laughed, talked about how Jim Lewis, the wonderful guy who started this store, wouldn’t have been happy with the floor manager’s actions, and went back to the task of unloading stuff on the conveyor belt.
Pushing my cart out to my car, I thought about how this was a small sweetness, an encounter with a stranger, nothing special, but in this time of keeping far from each other and on high alert for any coughing around us, this was especially sweet. You could say I should get out more, but in a pandemic, that’s not much of a possibility. Yet despite my social life with humans beyond phone and zoom mostly taking place in grocery stores, all of us wearing our KN 95 masks (I hope), there was something very human and reassuring about the experience.
Last week, I had a wonderful exchange with a man from Uruguay at Target at the check-out stand where he worked. We both loved rainbow-y scarves and were each wearing our best versions of the ones we owned. We talked about how neither of us could have imagined how we’d end up in Kansas, but we love it here.
At yoga class this week, heavily-masked and keeping our mats far apart in the big room, I marveled at my son Daniel’s handstand while he was impressed at how long I held a headstand. “Hey, how you doing?” we said in our muffled voices to each other at the end of each class as we layered up for the cold blast just outside the door. Small things, but in a time when such things are rare, these little exchanges are sweetnesses dotting the week.
Like right now: it’s 16 degrees but sunny. Our well-insulated dog has chosen to lie in the sun while our laundry freeze-dries on the line. It’s a flourish, a quiet note in the overall song of the day, but a sweet one. When I can get out of my own way, this is where I choose to put my attention.
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