Kindness in Five Movements

Or: Practicing "Good Noticing" at the state wrestling tournament.

1. The freeway curves, and suddenly the exit is right there. I’m going to miss it. I flip on my blinker and slam on my brakes. Traffic stops in my lane, and someone beeps their horn behind us. A white minivan flashes its lights at me and lets me cut over in front of them to take the exit. I wave, then relax and smile when the driver waves back. The sweat from my palm leaves a handprint on the steering wheel at 2 o’clock.
   

2. I’m flustered at the entrance to the metal detector. Royce and Maggie stand in front of me, frozen like statues at the entrance to the strange archway that beeped at the man in front of us. I forget to set my phone in the little dish to the side. The alarm sounds as I walk through, so I apologize, then back up. The man with the kind eyes takes my phone from me and waves me through again. When he lifts my phone to hand it back my lock screen illuminates, flashing a family picture from our session in September.
   
   “Oh what a beautiful family,” he says. “You are blessed, ma’am.”
   

3. I come out of the stadium between my nephew’s matches to find it has started raining. Reid squints up at me from the front pack and whimpers. My down coat is ill-suited for rain, and isn’t big enough to cover us both. I walk/run down the walkway to the bank of lockers and retrieve the diaper bag, then try unsuccessfully to seek shelter from the rain under the nonexistent overhang of the dome’s roof. The woman running the mobile locker rental desk insists I come around behind the desk, out of the rain, and holds my bag for me as I retrieve a clean diaper, wipes, and Reid’s sippy cup of water. She smells like lavender and cigarettes. 

Rain drips down my face and I look up at her. “Will they let me take this inside?” I say, lifting the sippy cup. 

“They’d better, it’s for the baby,” she says, her voice raspy. She wordlessly hands me a ziplock gallon bag to put everything in. 

4. My eyebrows shoot up when the concession stand employee announces that my total for four bottles of water and a small popcorn will be $27.85.
   
   He leans forward conspiratorially. “You can refill these in the drinking fountains downstairs by the athlete locker rooms.”
   
   Popcorn spills as he hands me the bag, and I walk away with a kernel squeaking under my shoe.
   

5. We are sitting with my husband’s entire family, at the top of the steepest section of stadium stairs I think I’ve ever seen. The tournament goes on all day, and I make the awkward shuffle down the row of seats to the aisle at least 100 times. The boy at the very end, who is not with our group, stands to let me pass every time with a smile. He looks to be about 16, and each time he smiles at me I think about raising my sons to be the kind of boys and men who are not outwardly inconvenienced by a woman and her children who need to pee every 20 minutes. 
   

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Inspired by this essay on noticing.