Easy

A bum shares a white sheet, not a blanket, with a fellow homeless person as they walk down the street outside my workplace this morning in a passing glimpse of resilient empathy.

I sit with headphones clouding my senses, typing away on the computer in my cubicle, when I feel a tap on my shoulder. The boss, the bigwig boss of the entire floor of workers, hands me a donut. I drop the headphones and say, "Thanks. Wow. Thank you for making it Friday." He smiles and walks away.

Our Friday work lunch is usually a long trip, several blocks onto the college campus nearby, for the barbecue joint that is tucked neatly into the rigid city lines and vertical structures. We order, we laugh, we greedily fork delicious sauce-coated bird or pig into our faces, and then we walk the heavy lunch off somewhat as we cross city blocks back to our building. Our trip was a little over 45 minutes today, not the hour-plus journey it usually takes, and we smiled at one another like we conquered something profound.

I smiled at every single person I passed in my walking today.

I left the bar and people and the fun and the routine and boarded Marta for the haul home. I read the Bible. I talked to a man who was not liked by the occupants of my train car. This person wasn't mean, he was just slower and loud and kind of redundant. I listened to him and responded to him and encouraged his dreams, which he willingly told me on my trip home.

I took a cab from the train station and left my shoulder bag in his car. He had given me his business card because we found each other easy to talk to and he hoped I'd use him as a driver every Friday. I grabbed the business card and called him, explaining my bag being in the cab. He turned around and dropped it off in my driveway to my relief and gratitude.

I finished my throwaway art project for R.J. Reynolds and listened to the final regular season Braves game and felt the wind of autumn curl around my expectant skin.

This is the day you thank your maker for and count as a blessing for life is soft and comforting and easy on the soul.