Paying Attention
She looked to be about two, maybe rounding the corner to three, but not older. For the sake of telling this story more easily, we’ll assume the adults in her company were her parents and grandparents, judging by who was smiling and who was looking harried carrying the diaper bag. We’ll also assume the infant in the stroller was her little brother.
It’s Saturday and we’re at the weekly indoor winter farmer’s market selling our granola in an upscale shopping mall, where vendors set up their stalls on both sides of the center walkway facing the shops. Most weeks, this creates a sort of ‘safe’ space behind us, where we can leave our hand trucks and extra product stored in bins, and market patrons understand not to wander back there or cut through to get to the other side of the mall. Today, a few of the vendors were missing, creating gaps in the stalls like a first-grader missing her front teeth.
We noticed this young family, as our eyes are usually drawn to marveling at grown-ups navigating a public space with small rambunctious children, and watched them walk just past our booth when they turned sharply into the vendor-less gap to claim a set of backless benches behind us. I felt their relief and could almost see their collective exhale. The toddler was in her element now, freed from the responsible arms that once held her fast, running back and forth from the benches where the menfolk sat and into the fine furs boutique directly across from our stall. She was gleefully licking a rainbow-bright all-day lollipop skewered onto a long wooden stick, waving it about like a wand she didn’t quite know how to use yet, as her mother and grandmother browsed the clearance rack of dresses and coats.
Of course I tended to our customers, but from the best part of my peripheral view, I could see the scene unfolding behind their backs in between sales and chatter. The grandmother had selected a long and flowing blue dress from the rack and was mouthing through the store’s entrance to her husband on the bench that she was going to “try this on, honey, I’ll be right back”. The mother was absorbed with another garment rack of last season’s furs. The girl with the colorful sticky sugary treat was now licking it and pressing it to the hem of every dress on the clearance rack, having to peel the fabric off the sucker ever so often so she could put it back in her mouth. I suspect she and I were the only ones who knew what was going on at that moment (her less than I). Just then, someone had a question about whether our granola was gluten-free, and after several back-and-forth minutes of what is necessarily more than a yes or no answer, I glanced up and noticed that the fur boutique was now empty of customers, as were the benches in the vendor “inner sanctum” area. I looked for but did not see a rainbow-colored sucker stuck to or dangling from any of the dresses on the clearance rack. The sales staff were busy rearranging one of the displays farther back in the shop and my imagination took off in an uncomfortable direction toward the fine gifts shop two stores down.
About thirty minutes later, I watched as a woman reached into a neighboring vendor’s sample bowl of pecans, put them in her mouth, licked her fingers and went back for more. She did this twice more before moving along to the next stall. I couldn’t see from where I was standing, but hoped those were the last pecans in the dish, and the vendors would soon put the bowl away and not refill it. More customers, and so don’t know the ending to that one-act play either.
Remember those assignments in grade school, where you were asked to look at a photo and write the back story that led to that particular snapshot? I reveled in those tasks, feeling like the director of a movie and for as long as it took me to conjure up the details, the One in Control of every character’s fate and destiny. People-watching takes on the import of an Olympic sport sometimes, and a crowded mall on a market Saturday offers up story fodder to keep me at my writing desk until the cobwebs connect my elbow to head, which is how they’ll find me after I’ve passed. I hope. I've always been an observer of life; in the past couple of decades, I've softened the sharp edges of my conclusions about the people I notice, knowing without any doubt that they need my compassion more than my judgment. I’d certainly want the same energy coming at me from across a crowded space. Yes, even the woman who licked pecan dust from her fingertips and went on to touch who knows what door handles, heads of hydroponically-grown lettuce and, please God, the soap dispenser in the ladies’ room. I pray for the strength of her—and everyone’s—immune system, especially now.
As members of various human communities, we’re always walking in on the middle of someone else’s unfolding story, not knowing the near-miss she just experienced or the broken plumbing he’ll find at home after a tiring day at the cash register. Squeezed in between those two possibilities and dozens of others, our encounters with strangers are filled with potential to wreak more havoc or apply the soothing balm of kindness. And, managing our own crises amid moments of smooth sailing, we can often miss the unspoken clues of a neighbor’s distress, a co-worker’s angst, and, still being good people, don’t offer to ease a burden we’d have gladly lifted had we been paying attention. It’s hard, I know.
Replaying those two simple moments of humanity from the market in my mind, I see now that I missed the opportunity to at least let a store owner know that a few of those clearance dresses were probably not going home with anyone, or to pull a decent fellow vendor aside and suggest the use of a spoon in the sample dish next week. It isn’t that I spent unoccupied time wrestling with my conscience. I was tending to my own sphere of influence and the scene changed, as scenes often do, and I wasn’t close enough, in time or distance, to intervene. I simply didn’t follow up. And I could have. Being attentive is an ongoing opportunity as our lives continue to unfold onto and across one another’s.
A breaking news alert: 470 total cases of coronavirus now in the United States, and Italy’s prime minister has just put the north part of his country on lockdown. If you’re looking for opportunities to notice what’s going on around you, and within you, now is the time.
Just remember kindness. This movie ain’t over, not by a mile.
