Ordinary things

Right now I'm reading the most hilarious book (Portuguese Irregular Verbs by Alexander McCall Smith) and I found myself sitting on our deck laughing so hard I almost cried. The most wonderful thing about that book was the simple hilarity in simple daily events. There was nothing elaborately constructed, no cleverly worded puns, just the delight of a very ordinary man doing his ordinary work and the ordinary humor and joy in just that.
I had my share of a little humor today at work. It's good to laugh. It lifts our spirits and makes us feel more loving and willing to excuse other people for their foibles.
It started when I walked to work this morning. A half-hour walk down the hill to my Dad's store. Well, I decided to zig-zag down the hill and got to the end of one unfamiliar street and discovered it was a dead-end. Drat. I would be late for work. I backtracked and went down another street, only to find that it joined up with the street I'd just been down. Oh man. I walked for an hour and ten minutes before I got to the store. The funny thing about it is that I've lived in that neighborhood for 19 years and I've walked that route so many times it's not even funny.
Later on that afternoon a customer stopped me and asked if she could go up to the second floor of the store. "Of course you can, the stairs are right there."
But she hesitated and waved towards them. I came over and discovered, curled up on the stairs, two little dark-haired boys, fast asleep.
"I thought they might be the owner's children...." She said lamely.
When I woke them up they were sleepy but not scared. They were waiting for their mom, they said. I led them over to a big chair to sit on and gave them a book to read. One of the little boys told me he'd been at Children's Hospital that day and he'd been given some medicine that made him sleepy.
Over the next hour they curled up on the chairs and I talked to them while their mother shopped. Their mother was beautiful and very distant from them. While she was paying for her purchases the little boys went outside and sat on a rock outside the store in the sun.
My heart began to break for them. I've never thought of myself as a kidsy person, but I've always wanted to mother, and it saddened me so much to see these two little boys so neglected and ignored, little waifs.
We have such an opportunity to share love and gentleness and joy with each other. Our lives are so full, so rich, so blessed. Our ordinary days have so much to laugh at and so much to share and just enough time to take care of each other.