Ever since arriving in town, I get flashbacks whenever I throw sausages on the frying pan.
Standing in line at the grocery store, it’d just been a week since I moved here.
A woman in front of me started chatting to me.
I told her I just arrived, and we talked about how nice it was here.
I said I loved looking at the Stawamus Chief every time I stepped out the door in the morning, and she told me she’d been a climber in a past life.
We made a few obligatory remarks about the weather, but then the conversation somehow veered into a discussion about a friend of hers who’d died on a climb.
That day was anniversary of his death, she said.
I said I was sorry, and tried to figure out how to fill in the deafening silence.
I looked at the grey light streaming in through the window, my mind drawing a blank.
Then she grabbed the pack of sausages I’d placed by the register.
“Hey, it’s on me.” she said, paying for it at the till before I could finish blinking.
I was stunned. A stranger has never bought me anything at a grocery store.
“Don’t worry,” she said with a smile. “You’ll do it for someone else someday.”
I left the market in a bit of daze, not quite sure what had happened, but with the imprint of that tired-looking grin on my mind.
I try to recall that woman’s smile whenever I feel a bit of tiredness in my life.
On those days when the Chief still looks gorgeous in the morning, but life only grants me a few seconds to look at it between work and home, or on those weekends when my idea of a party is not waking up at the crack of dawn, I try to remember that grin.
It becomes all the more important on those days when the sheen of a place wears off – when the day-to-day grind replaces the honeymoon.
But there’s one thing that doesn’t wear off, if it’s a good place, is the small town kindness.
I remember this when I heat up the stove and throw sausages on the frying pan.
“They give you free sausages here,” I mutter under my breath, with a chuckle.
I can’t help but grin afterwards.
