Today was one of the those days when I wasn’t sure if lunch was going to happen. But it was also one of those days when I had been up the night before with a cold and got up feeling terribly weak. So after doing two interviews for my day job, I treated myself to soup and a sandwich at one of my favorite spots (Pickled Peach) in Davidson.
I went outside looking for a table. There were only two vacant. One was for four people, and being the polite soul that I am, I couldn’t take a four-seater for little old me. There was a two-seater around the corner, but a canned drink left on the table made me think it was reserved. That said, I went back inside and sat at the bar by the window.
A few minutes later, I felt a tap on my arm, and it was this nice older gentleman I recognized from the Y. (I’m an exercise addict, so the Y is like my vacation home, complete with a pool and sauna but sans a big mortgage.) Anyway, he asked if he could join me if I wasn’t having a quiet lunch. I motioned him to sit down.
His name is Ron. He’s 70, has an earring and is crazy fit. He complimented me on my writing and said I reminded him of his late sister. “When I read your writing, I think of her.” Folks, I’ve had some nice compliments in my day, but this tops the list. What an honor to be the instigator of happy memories for someone. I gave myself an invisible pat on the back.
Ron is retired, but his wife, 10 years younger, is not. “She still works, and I take care of everything else,” he said. In addition to taking care of their home, he works out daily and walks his dog on local trails at least twice a day. “It’s called forest bathing,” he said. “Oh, I know,” I replied, adding that I had skipped my class at the Y this morning to run on the sylvan college campus in our town.
Today is the last day we’re supposed to have sun this week, so I took advantage of it. As a bonus, I saw tulips making their way through the ground and a bluebird (my favorite, can you tell?) flying above them. It was a total Snow White moment, except I don’t clean like she does and I’m blonde (fake blonde, but blonde nonetheless). Other than that, you would have thought seven dwarfs were running behind me.
Ron and I kept talking about how we like being outside and how he spends most of his time being grateful. (Talk about a wink, there.) I said, I tried to do that to, even on bad days. Then he said, “Bad days compared to what?” Boom! Ron snapped me out of my rut and into reality, which isn’t bad in the least. He left a few minutes after that to go to the dermatologist for a mole patrol. He started going bald in his 20s and was living in Florida at the time, do the math.
As he left, I thought back to the can I saw sitting on the table for two. Because of that can, I ended up having a delightful lunch with someone I hardly knew. (We’re tight now because of the forest bathing thing, but we didn’t know that before lunch.) I sat there thinking of what a wonderful Wink of Goodness lunch with Ron was. Chatting with him was much better than scrolling any site on my phone or making yet another to-do list. It was a nourishing as my soup and sandwich.