These Are a Few of My Favorite Things

One of the things that warms my heart the most on a daily basis is the tiny and delicate glimpse of people's humanity I see in folks when they don't know that other people are watching. Sometimes it comes in the form of little moments of exposed vulnerability that occur when people's facades accidentally slip down, before they're aware that they've become exposed and neatly sew things back up, quickly and seamlessly. Other times I see it in the wake of their dailing living--personal items and objects strewn just so, that capture the pared-down individual and what they're like when no one else is around. Both make my heart feel squishy and warm.

I was thinking this last night after someone I know (though not well) parked next to me, and I pictured them peering into my car-windows and looking around, reading all the garbage littering the inside of my car like tea-leaves in a porcelain cup, from the inexplicable box of plastic utensils, to the purple condom hanging from my rearview mirror, to the fact that it's not been dusted in years, to the ridiculous amount of shoes littering the floor.

For some reason, the loveliness of these sorts of moments has been crystallized into one singular moment in my brain, a memory from 6 or 7 years ago which still floats up into my consciousness every once in a while:

Once when I stopped over an instructor's house and, right before I knocked, I could see her through the window, in her kitchen, leaning forward on her tip-toes to reach some dishes high up on a shelf. This, my instructor, who would barrel on and on like a bullhorn about feminism, who was surly and often seemed like she could bite the head off of a chicken, doing something shockingly normal and strangely and wonderfully domestic.

I waited and just watched for a short while before ringing the doorbell.

-------