Dear Seattle,

Yogurt and granola has become a simple fact of my morning routine. Also fact is that, like hotdogs and buns, I always seem to run out of one before the other.  So it shouldn’t have been a surprise when I woke up this morning and opened the mini fridge to find I had a full bag of granola and not a container of yogurt in sight.

In the last few days I seem to have reverted back to my original Costa Rica schedule – at least now I’m only waking up at 6:30 instead of 5:30. This morning it meant I had a full half hour to wait until Super Ronny opened before I could get my breakfast on. Determined that I would not be disrupted from my routine of sitting on the porch in my pajamas with a cup of yogurt and granola and a book (A Thousand Acres is my latest read) I washed my face, brushed my teeth, waited a bit longer for good measure then hopped on my bike and pedaled the 2 minute ride to the supermarket.

Early mornings are so blissfully quiet here: the road is still dust free and there are only a few people out and about. Instead of dodging cars and quads there is only the occasional wandering dog and early morning surfer to greet as I pass by. In the market I had a singular focus to get yogurt and get gone, so I hardly paid attention to the other customers other than the polite “Buenos Dias” and a smile on my way out the door.

I was making good speed home when I hit a rock at the bottom of the hill and felt the rear wheel bounce sharply under me. When I pushed into my next pedal stroke I was greeted with a total absence of resistance. The chain had popped off. I hopped off and did a bit of cursing and stomping about the inevitability of some problem on the one morning intended to make a quick trip (I was still in my pjs and not even wearing  a BRA for godssakes).

My bike is a hundred year old cruiser with a chain guard so for a few minutes I struggled and puffed, scraping my knuckles and cursing some more. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a man coming up the hill that I recognized from my brief foray into the grocery store. I gritted my teeth, hoping I wasn’t going to get an early morning come-on from a forward Tico, determined to walk the bike the rest of the way before he could catch up to me.

Too late. He stepped up to the other side of the bike, took one look at things and put down his grocery bags. In Spanish, he assessed the chain, then just took over, murmuring “suerte, mami, suerte,” when I tried to help out. It was a moment before I noticed that his left hand, below the wrist was missing entirely. Suddenly I remembered him, I’d seen him around town a lot in the last few weeks, but we hadn’t spoken a word to each other besides a “Buenos” and “Hola” in passing. I was always careful not to stare at his arm because his quiet manner didn’t seem to require pity. In less than a minute he had popped the chain loose from where it was tangled in bolt and re-threaded it on the wheels.  He stood up, smiled and almost before I could say thanks continued walking up the hill.

Humility and gratitude swept me like a six foot wave, and for a moment I just stood there, watching him continue up the road without a backward glance. I didn’t even have a name.

This small kindness – unexpected and without expectation of reward – struck the deepest sense of myself and what I know of the world around me, and has shaken me more profoundly than any other experience I’ve had so far on this adventure. The only way I know to repay that act is to pass that kindness on in a hundred little ways as long as I live.

Signing off,

Eds.