They were maybe seventy, eating lunch at the café where I work most mornings. Not talking much — the way people don’t when they’ve been together long enough that silence is a form of company. At some point the woman reached over and straightened the collar of the man’s jacket without him asking, without interrupting whatever she was reading. He didn’t even look up. She went back to her book.
I watched this for maybe four seconds before looking away, but I kept thinking about it for the rest of the morning. That particular kind of ease — the kind where you adjust someone’s collar without making it a moment — takes decades to build. I don’t know if I’ll ever have it. But it was good to see that it exists.
Some things you don’t experience so much as file away quietly, for later, as proof that a certain kind of life is possible.