Thinking Out Loud

By Gerard Meister

Yesterday was a lucky day for me. I saw the sun rise twice, once when I watched the dawn unfold inch by inch over the over the reddish tiled roofs across the lake from my bedroom window adding a glowing ginger colored tint to the sky. Then around two o’clock that afternoon a new dawn broke for me, but in a more personal way and it takes a bit of explaining:

I was ambling down the aisles at my local supermarket doing the day’s shopping. The store was not overly crowded so the marketers moved along at a slow pace. One of the shoppers, a young handsome woman with jet-black hair and high cheekbones approached pushing one of those low hung strollers, which replaced the high wheeled perambulators of my day. Perched in the stroller was a toddler of about six months, I guessed. And was he ever busy, his coal-black eyes were level with the second shelf from the bottom and he was drinking everything in. He had his mother’s high cheekbones and a full head of black hair.

Then just as we were about to pass one another, like ships in the night, our eyes met. I could not help but smile as he eyed me up and down trying to figure who (or what, really) he was looking at. And then as he processed the information that I was most likely a friend rather than a foe, a toothless smile broke across his face pushing his cheekbones even higher and adding a twinkle to his eyes.

I was transfixed and his mother, sensing what was going on – she was able to see my face, not his – slowed down so that we could continue to ogle one another. His chubby neck corkscrewed as we passed until I was gone from his view, but his innocent, sunshine-bright smile stayed with me for the rest of the day.