THOUGHTS ON SHARING THE HEART

New Bloom - © Sue O'Kieffe 2009

So tonight on the way home I stopped at the grocery store for a few dinner items. I noticed some of the trees and shrubs had started to bloom and so grabbed my camera from my bag. Snap snap snap. I put the camera away and started walking towards the store.

An older woman waiting in the car parked next to mine rolled down her window. "You've been doing what I've wanted to be doing the whole time I've been sitting here," she said to me. "I used to have a camera but I sold it. Could I see the pictures you took?"

And so we talked about the photos and the fact that I had no idea what kind of shrub was showing this new growth and about how she regretted selling her Canon. I looked in her eyes. "Well, sometimes we just have to do things because we have to." A look ---understanding? recognition of truth? --- passed over her face. Or was this just projection on my part, knowing the hard financial choices I have had to make in the past, because I had to. Whatever it was, I felt heart warmth shared between us.

It's moments like these that make us human. We hunger for these moments.

So why don't we do it more often?

I figure as the shrub in the grocery store parking lot develops some more, I might be able to determine what it is. But I will never be able to relive that powerful moment with a sad woman in a car, wishing she still had her camera.