The dryer finished before I expected it to and I had twelve minutes to kill at the laundromat on Burnside, which is not a place you go to feel good about anything. An older man was folding an enormous pile of children’s clothes at the table across from me, very methodically, matching socks two at a time. At some point he held up a tiny pair of overalls, looked at them for a second, and smiled to himself in a way that had nothing to do with me or anyone else watching.
I don’t know if he was a grandfather or a father or something else entirely. I just know that whatever he was thinking about made his whole face soft, and I happened to be there to see it, and it was one of the better twelve minutes I’d had that week. Other people’s private joy is its own kind of gift, if you happen to be standing in the right place to catch it.