Smile and Wave

There is a school crossing guard in our town who has a couple of different posts each morning due to different schools starting at different times. I have been driving by him for better than 3 years at different times.

He smiles and waves at every car that drives by his post. And not in a menacing creepy weird way, but in a truly friendly happy way. I've never seen him miss a beat, not even on the rainiest, gloomiest, or coldest (And Chicagoland winters can be their own category of brutal) days. He just smiles and waves and passes on a little joy.

I used to drive by the junior high every morning on my way to drop the kids off at daycare and that is the post I would pass him at. Every morning. Without fail.

Now that I am a stay at home mom, I am not in my minivan transporting children every morning at precisely 7:42am, so I don't often see him anymore. But this morning I broke down and decided Starbucks was in order (In my defense here, I really only still obsess about Starbucks-I have cut down an almost every day habit to approximately once a week) due to the quantity of things I would like to accomplish today.

On the way home, I drove by his second post, which is just down the street from the school my son attends. As I drove by and waved back as I always do (for some strange reason I can't control the impulse to wave back to him, and have always returned his wave) I realized There are a few things I miss about my pre-work hectic morning scrambles, and his little bit of unselfconscious joy spreading waving is one of them.

And so today, I've decided to pass it on. A smile and a wave. I know it's simple, but today, it's all I've got.