For years, my Sundays followed the same simple routine, and I never once questioned it. I thought I was just helping an old neighbor, but I had no idea how much those ordinary mornings would come to mean.
The street was quiet that Sunday morning, the type of morning you only experience in a suburb where everyone’s still nursing their first coffee. I was 28 years old, standing on my driveway with the recycling bin, watching the maple leaves drift down two houses over.
It was the most ordinary moment of my life, which is probably why I remember it so clearly.
***
Ezra had lived next door for years. We’d waved from our driveways, traded quick hellos, and gone right back to our own days. I couldn’t have told you the color of his front door without checking.
It was the most ordinary moment of my life.
That morning, I saw Ezra fumbling with four grocery bags in his trunk. One slipped, caught on his elbow, and almost hit the pavement. I walked over before I’d thought about it.
“Let me grab those,” I said.
“Oh, you don’t have to,” my neighbor said.
“I know. Come on.”
He didn’t argue after that. I carried the bags up his porch and into a kitchen that smelled of old wood and instant coffee. The old man moved slowly and carefully, the way men do when they’ve been alone a long time.
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