Friday, January 27, 2012

To be noticed

We had a surprise at the end of dinner last night.  We had gone out to eat, an odd occurrence on a Thursday night.  But the week has been a little odd:  Noel got the stomach flu Monday night, and was up until 5:00 a.m. throwing up; I got the stomach flu Wednesday night, and followed suit; by 5:00 p.m. last night, I was exhausted without dinner planned.  So, we loaded the girls into the car and headed to a nice little local restaurant.  We especially like this place because they don't mind if Noel runs laps around the table while she waits for dinner.

When we asked our waitress for the bill, she said it had already been paid.  After much questioning on our part, she confessed that a gentleman sitting a few tables away had paid it.  I'm not sure why he paid for us, but it made my night, my week, even my month.  I've spent today thinking about this gentleman, and why he gave this anonymous gift to our family.

When we were at the restaurant, I barely noticed him.  I overheard the waitress asking him if he was enjoying the fish and chips.  Scottie noticed him working on his iPad.  But we didn't notice anything else, whereas he noticed our family in entirety.  He probably noticed that my hair was in two braids, no makeup, and that my pants were wrinkled.  He noticed our two adorable girls, competing for attention.  He noticed Scottie who was trying to feed our girls, while carrying on a conversation with me.  And somewhere in all this noticing, he thought we needed a little bit of kindness.  So, he paid for our dinner, and left without us noticing.  And left me feeling that I should have noticed him a bit more.

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