Tear myself in two, just to hear you breathe.

In the deli the other morning, in my half-asleep, pre-caffeinated haze, I knocked over an entire stack of large plastic cups as I tried to extract a single one for my chilly iced beverage of choice. Oops. I watched in confusion as they tumbled over, and then looked bashfully at the girl standing next to me and laughed, saying exactly what had just gone through my head, “Oops.”

She looked at me, laughed, and said, “I do that all the time.”

How sweet is that? I mean, really. “I do that all the time.” Come on. No one does that all the time. I’m in that deli every morning, and personally, I’ve never before seen the tower of plastic cups take a dive.

But with a sparkle in her eye, she said good-naturedly, “I do that all the time.”

Sigh. My heart fluttered.

And then... and THEN... Do you know what she did? She walked to the other side of the counter and picked them up. She actually picked up the cups for me and put them back on the counter. How is such kindness even possible? This is the type of thing we feel lucky to read about it books, knowing that we shall likely never experience it ourselves. She, a complete stranger, went out of her way not only to be empathic to me, a complete stranger, but to then extend herself and clean up a mess that I, a complete stranger, had made.

And that was the first time I fell in love that morning.