One Small Good Thing

It's Friday night and I'm home alone. I'm on the phone with my friend Casey, from Houston. We're trying to make some sense of the events of the last two days--the shooting of Philando Castile in St. Paul and the ambush of the police officers in Dallas. She is a long time criminal lawyer who has been both prosecutor and defense and her husband is a veteran police officer in Harris County. They've both seen a lot. We talk about the hopeless feelings we are all having and shed a couple tears and move on to lighter topics, but in the end, we're both feeling pretty dark.

I hang up the phone and sip my glass of wine. It's getting dark and I'm startled when my white suburban doorbell rings. I peek around the corner and see a black man standing at my door. It takes me about 2.5 seconds of fear to remember that Coborn's Grocery delivery is sending out the rest of my suburban housewife grocery order, because there was a mistake in my delivery yesterday. He's not the usual driver, this black kid, and as I unlock the door and take the groceries he's smiling ear to ear. A real smile. Like an angel. He's looking at me and smiling. So I smile back. I ask if he had any trouble finding the house because it's hard to see our numbers at night. He's says no--he found it with no trouble. I say thank you and I stand with the groceries in the open door as he walks back down the sidewalk. Half way to his truck he turns to me and calls out, "my name's Leonard." I say, thank you Leonard, have a good night.

For some reason, it was healing.