Artist at Work

People who take pride in the work they do touch me.

Yesterday, I went to the grocery store, for once, remembering my big reusable bags. Filled the cart up. Went to check out.

The gentleman checking me out took his time, carefully reaching over to grab all the frozen things to ring them up first, putting them in one bag, then the refrigerated items, sorting, lifting the bags to make sure any one bag wasn't too heavy. "Please hand me that," he said, pointing to one item. He worked as carefully as an artist putting together a mosaic, making sure they fit just so. As I paid, I told him, Thank you, that was like watching an artist. You could go into professional organizing! He laughed and said that, well, there's just a certain way to do things, if you want to do it right.

So true.

When we were in the hospital, there was a man from housekeeping who came by to clean the room. Very friendly, and very careful about what he was doing. As he mopped, he told LW, "I'm making this good and clean so you can play on the floor." When I thanked him, he said, "Well, it's very important that we keep things as clean as possible so the little ones don't get sick."

During our 6 month in-an-out, he and I saw each other several times and always enjoyed a good conversation.

I thought of him yesterday, watching my groceries be carefully bagged. My hospital friend saw his job as every bit as important as that of the doctors and nurses. He knew that his job was -- literally -- a matter of life and death.

I am sometimes careless with some of the jobs that I do, in and around the house. These people inspire me to do better.