So, I was standing on line at the Seven Stars Bakery when the door to the restroom swung wide. Out walked a three-year old boy wiping his hands on a paper towel, proudly proclaiming to all and sundry “I went. I went.” His father followed, blushing ever so slightly. My companions on line smiled and expressed sotto voce that going is a great thing.
Gradually I made my way to the front of the line. I requested a half loaf of the pain de mei sliced for sandwiches, waited a minute more as she processed it through the cutting machine, paid and picked up my loaf and made my way to the door where a young woman seeing me approach pulled the door open. “There you go, sir.”
I’m not actually positive. But I think this may have been the first time a younger person held a door open for an older person and that older person was me.
And I’m not sure how I feel about that.
But there could be worse things. No doubt. No doubt…
And, of course that is how it is. One moment we’re proud to go to the bathroom all by ourselves, well, almost. The next moment someone is holding the door open to us as an elder…
Birth, living, dying…
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