One saving grace among many.....

Tuesdays, I can take or leave.

They are a variation on a theme, really; normally, I work at midnight until the sun comes up, but on Tuesdays, I enter the building that looks like a large stack of pancakes (mmmmm, pancakes!) at 3:30, and work until midnight. And then, I take a few days off. So, Tuesday brings the beginnings of all the things I couldn't do in the course of the week...the chores and whatnot.

So. Gym. Mowed the lawn, which was a major chore, but it's done, and given the fact that the weather is turning quite quickly here in the Northern State, it will probably be my last mowing of the season. Showered, shaved, made a grocery list. Napped.

And on my way to work, I was halted by the red light at the corner of Washington and Boulevard Avenue. I say that because I want everybody to get a kick out of a street called Boulevard Avenue.

Anyway, on the sidewalk on the corner were a young man and a young woman (boy and girl, if you prefer) riding their bicycles. They appeared to be laughing at something. They were both smiling broadly at each other.

My background allowed me to wander into story time, making up who they are and what the relationship is, where they rode from and where they were riding to, and what the ages were and so on.....

But I had to come back to the smile. That smile that seems to come too infrequently in adulthood; that smile that makes that moment, that very moment there, the most important one in the known and unknown world.

That kind of smile goes the way of the dodo as you get older, I fear. You can't have that kind of smile once you begin to analyze everything, or worry about where the next paycheck is going, or wonder if you have to mow the lawn one more time.

I smiled, though. But my smile was not as broad, but more sentimental. I was smiling at the memory of being that....burdened.

Those smiles belong to the young; they shouldn't have to worry for many years.

I worry, so they don't have to.

Still. It was a good memory, and the smile felt good.