Reaching Out in the Checkout Line

I found a checkout line in the grocery store with only one person in front of me.

After all of his groceries were bagged, the man continued to have a conversation with Sarah, the checkout woman. “Get a move on,” I thought to myself.

It wasn’t until I checked out that I realized it wasn’t the man who was slowing things up. It was Sarah.

When I asked her how she was, she told me that upon returning to her home a few days ago, she found her fiance dead. He had suffered a fatal stroke.

I, too, had a conversation with Sarah.

Sunday Morning, Fathers and Sons

I was sitting in my car outside of Starbucks this morning, enjoying my overpriced coffee and pumpkin loaf.

Occasionally a father and his toddler or teenage son would cross the parking lot, headed into one of the stores, the sort of thing that fathers and sons do on a Sunday morning — spend time together, bond, talk.

I remember one such Sunday morning with my father, a very, very long time ago. “C’mon, Bud, come with me to the deli,” he said, as he got ready for the weekly run for bagels, lox, cream cheese, and the Sunday New York Times.

As we sat in the car after our shopping was done, he told me that my mother was not my real mother. My biological mother had died shortly after giving birth to me, he said so matter of factly, as if he was telling his 19-year-old son the score of last night’s game.

There is betrayal, and then there is betrayal.