I am sitting in a coffee shop, writing a diverse thesis on my life when I see her come around the corner of the bar, clamber up on the tall bar chair that was almost double her height and settle in. 

She looks around 4 years old, but I’m not good with ages, so I don’t know. 

She seems comfortable there, and I see that her eyes follow something or someone straightaway from her.

Soon, she slides up on the bar with her upper body and I see the bar chair tip precariously away from her.  I get ready to make a rush for it if the chair does, indeed tip, leaving her high and dry and overbalanced in way that she and the floor will have a meeting sooner rather than later.

But she steadies herself in that graceful way any woman is capable of, and, as her chair tips back to level, she cups her chin in her hands and gazes in what seems to me, rapt attention, even adoration, of someone. 

And then I see who that someone is.

It’s her older sister.

And her sister is one of the baristas. 

Her big sister meets her across the bar, in much the same way her little sister is, halfway down on the bar, chin cupped in her hands.

They gaze into each other’s eyes, and smile at each other.

Her older sister asks her if she is going to cut up the onions and peppers that need to be cut up for her evening plans.

Little sister giggles and says, “No way!”

About then, I see their mother round the same corner of the bar that the little girl had earlier and, hearing the conversation about the onions and peppers, says, as she affectionately jiggles the little girl, “No, you can cut them up, we need to get you home so you can get some snoozy woozies.”

Mom offers to cut the onions and peppers up for big sister but there is no need.  Big sister has it handled.

Attention waning as the conversation turns older than her, little sister runs to the door to let herself outside to the beautiful spring day.

But she can’t quite do it.  The door is a bit heavier than her, and they bump each other around for a bit.

Her big sister sees and calls out encouragingly, “Go muscles!”

And with that bit of encouragement, the little girl gets the door open and lets herself and  her carefree laughter outside as the door tingles merrily shut behind her. 

Mom and big sister quietly finish up their conversation and Mom turns to leave.

Big sister turns back to her work.

I turn deeply inward, because, as I said in the beginning, I was writing a thesis on my life.

But it is no longer a thesis.

Rather, it is the scene that I have just written about that seems to give every appearance of kindness and camaraderie.