An Uplift

Sitting in a doctors’ waiting room yesterday I saw two women enter and sign in. They somehow looked familiar. After studying them for a while it occurred to me. The reason I didn’t instantly recognize them is that they aged since the fifteen of so years since the last time I saw them. They were mother and daughter.

We used to shop at Kroger’s on Wednesday evenings (senior discount day) and that is also the time this family picked to shop. The man is dark, like an Indian or a Pakistanian (?). They had two kids, a preteen girl and a hyper little boy. The little boy was also dark. They had accents of some kind.

Seeing them only one time a week I could see the preteen girl’s health beginning to decline. First she had a patch on one eye and later developed a limp which seemed to get worse each week. Then, she were no longer with them at Krogers. The parents looked depressed. I thought she had died. And the little boy was just as hyper, getting into everything.

In the waiting room the mother’s hair was turning gray and thinner but it was them. The daughter looked like a grown up and in good health version of the little sickly preteen girl. And the mother and daughter looked very happy interacting with each other.

Of course, being invisible they didn’t notice me then and didn’t notice me now. They then lived only a few blocks from us I found out when one time I went to a yard sale they were having. I bought something from them, I forgot what.

That was uplifting for me, to see the girl, now a lady, uplift herself from whatever.