The returns line snaked past electronics and halfway to housewares. I’d brought the wrong sweater size—again—and the store was out of what I needed. I stood there, patient. That’s what eighty-eight years teaches you.
I thought about the flashlight I keep by the back door. Every night I grab it for the walk to the car, even when the moon is full. No one sees that. No one needs to.
Forty-one years married, and my husband still leaves his coffee cup on the counter. I rinse it without thinking. That’s who I am when no one’s watching.
The choir director once told me that the hardest note to hold isn’t the loud one—it’s the quiet one between measures, the one you sustain alone. I think about that in line, watching people fume and check their phones.
By the time I reached the clerk, I’d decided. I didn’t need the exchange. I just needed to stand still in a line and see the shape of my own quiet life.