The Blessing
It was a small thing. All I did was to retrieve a couple of fallen teaspoons.
My youngest son and I had stopped at the mall between my dropping him home and then heading out for work. We were both stressed after his session at the orthodontist. No-one exactly likes things stuck in their mouths. Anyone who has ever had a mould taken of their teeth for a crown or orthodontic work will understand our traumatised states. Now include his Autism Spectrum Disorder to begin to grasp his increased sensitivity and panic, and my feeling plain awful for putting him through it all. I let him range up and down the mall, letting off his tension energy, while I queued to buy him a sausage roll and milkshake for lunch.
I had paid and was waiting for the sausage roll to be warmed when I heard the tinkle of falling cutlery. I saw an elderly woman bend to try and retrieve the teaspoons, but she was unable to reach them. I quickly moved over and picked up the spoons, just as her husband got up. I beat him to it. He thanked me in thickly accented English.
“Good look,” he declared with his very few words. “Good look…..Monday, Tuesday…Friday…” (numbering his fingers) ”…Good look.”
I smiled and said it was nothing, hurrying back to wait for the food. What on earth did he mean? At first I wondered if my rear end as I bent over was the “good look”. Not likely with my figure. Then I wondered if he was trying to tell me I was good looking every day of the week.
The words shifted, rearranging themselves in my mind, according to the accent. Good look…..Good luk….. Good luck! As the meaning clicked into place I felt the magic curling around my hearing, my receiving, my understanding. Good luck every day of the week! Good luck from the old folk of the old ways; a blessing thick with import like real cream in old, sweet recipes; a wish filled with talismans, old as memory and dripping in stories. Good luck every day of the week.
I felt it wrap around me and hold me. It meant so much.
The Wistful Dragon 
Hi Alice
Great writing. Such a simple moving moment of connection. Keep going!