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REGARDING THE THOUSAND AND ONE MUST-DO UNREWARDED KINDNESSES
I am walking gingerly, leaning into the gray wind of a gray day, dancing around gray asphalt cracks and humps to maintain balance long enough to enter the safety of the nearby store.
Everything seems like gray routine. The gray familiarity of this frequented trek is passing by so little noticed or noted that I could close my eyes and still find the door I seek.
Fluttering just behind and to the left of me is a gray figure navigating toward the same destination. Her clothing is parachuting about her small frame, disrupting her course and causing her to exert extra effort to reach the entrance.
I automatically reach out to open the door, step aside to motion her through ahead of me, only just now paying attention to her face and the strands of hair crisscrossing her vision.
She hesitates to enter and I bow to indicate I’m waiting for her to precede me.
She glances at me for the first time, popping out of her strained inner thoughts long enough to raise her eyebrows,widen her eyes, and stare through me as if to say, “Why would you do something so nice for me? For someone like me? Of all people?”
I smile reassurance, she accepts my old-fashioned gentlemanly act just long enough to enter.
I follow her into the store, but she is already rushing across the aisles as if to avoid having to confirm a stranger’s kindness that must surely be misguided. As if to say, “You may change your mind and decide I’m not worthy of this act. I don’t want to face that possibility.”
The moment is a mere wisp. The gray routine of the gray day bears down upon us and we go our permanent separate ways toward indefinable destinies
© Jim Reed 2018 A.D.