Common Threads

Our host today at http://www.ethicalela.com for VerseLove is Ann Burg of New York, who inspires us to write haibun poetry. Haibun is a form that includes a prose passage to set the stage for a haiku, which immediately follows the prose. You can read her full prompt here. I reflected on a scene from Saturday morning as we ate breakfast.

The Head and The Feet

Saturday morning breakfast at the Country Kitchen on Pine Mountain we were waiting on our eggs and grits when I saw him shuffle past our table. A young and impatient mother with a crying child pitching a fit was stuck behind the elderly gentleman in in the aisle, clearly frustrated at his slow speed, in his ill-fitting sweatpants with black socks and orthopedic sandals. He veered right n the direction of the restroom and she squeezed left to her table, kid still screaming. My husband’s back was to the action as I gave the play-by-play. Notice him, I urged, when he comes back by. I thought it ironic that his orthopedic sandals looked like hiking sandals. Life can be cruel like that sometimes, but eggs arrive to scramble hard truths. I was taking a bite when my husband asked, Is that a veteran’s hat? We should buy his breakfast. And the next minute, this husband of mine – just like his mother would have done – excuses himself to walk by the man’s table to get a better look. And then I saw them talking. Why did tears fill my eyes? Why, here at this table, over eggs and bacon, coffee and grits and buttered biscuits with muscadine preserves, was I crying as I watched my husband place his hand on the shoulder of the old man and his wife as he thanked him for his service. I escaped to the gift shop to collect myself, wipe away the tears, before my husband returned with the scoop – as his mother would have done: it’s a veteran’s hat. He’s 78, was a sergeant in the Army, and he has four kids who are all currently serving in the military. His wife told me he has cancer, and when he finished chemo and his gray hair came back dark. And he always smiles. So we finished our last bites and I felt the tears welling again, excused myself to the restroom, and was almost fine until the old man walked by and place his hand on my husband’s shoulder in gesture of figuring out who’d treated them to breakfast. And I realized what we’d always said of ourselves when we walk into a place: I look down for snakes, he looks up for bees ~ and though we see things differently, we don’t miss what’s important.