The Waiters

      The stoplight is long. I sit on a one lane busy street waiting for the crossing guard. Traffic is backed up for two blocks, like it always is this time of day.  Waiting for the light. Waiting for all the other mothers and dads and daycare providers to cluster and disperse.  They pick up their precious ones, and I pick up mine. Another waiter stands on the corner.  Her charcoal parka hood pulled up around her face, obscuring her demographics.  Slight build, somewhere between a woman and a child, long slender legs clad in dark gray leggings and black suede boots halfway to her knee.  Her boots are coated in the powder snow that fell down all day, light and dry.  Her coat covers her figure, everything about her sleek and dark. Her trendy, colorful backpack is solid and full on her back. She absent-mindedly traces circles with her toe the snow, her phone in hand, her head down, checking and rechecking some communication.  She checks the street, checks the traffic, types on the touch screen.

        An unkempt little person unhurriedly approaches.  He is clad in layers of orange coat and long sleeved t-shirt, his jeans are untidily sticking out of black rubber-soled snow boots. His coat is unzipped, his gloves stick out of the coat pockets. His blonde hair is stuck here and there on his forehead, his cheeks are pink with the cold.  He licks his fingers, eating snow out of the schoolyard.  He smiles at the girl and approaches her, adoring eyes up, hands up, fingers splayed out displaying his frozen prize. He comes up to her waist.

            I expect her to ignore him. I expect her to brush him off. Push him away. Adolescent nonchalance. Scold him for his gloves off.  Instead, he sticks his hands in the pockets of her coat.  She pulls him in close.  He tilts his head way back and grins up at her.  She brushes snow off his cheeks and pulls him in close for a hug.  She leans down; gentle and kind sister reaching down to a wild and rumpled little brother. She puts her face right next to his and says something to him I cannot hear through the car window. He beams and giggles, pulls away and goes back for more snow. Every thing in her body language tells me he is precious. Every thing in her posture tells me she would protect him to the ends of the earth. Legs splayed, he leans down and grabs two more handfuls of snow. She gets what she needs from her phone. She calls to him, he takes her hand. They walk across the street.  

      I have been contemplating this little scene of waiting all afternoon.  Two things I'm thinking: 

1 -there is love in that home. 2- Do my actions and reactions in the absent-minded moments of my day show the love I have for my people? I'll never forget this little scene as long as I live. How lovely is love when it crops up in unexpected places.  What a glowing neon sign for the world it can be when we practice it well.