Life gives us more gifts in a day than we unwrap in a year.

From Alfred’s journal

A woman left a bag of groceries on the bench by the laundromat this morning and came back forty minutes later, out of breath, to find it exactly where she had set it down. She laughed, and then she stood there a while looking at the bag like she had never seen it before. For years I thought the trouble was scarcity, that there was not enough going around and the thing to do was get your share early. Watching her, I thought instead that life gives us more gifts in a day than we unwrap in a year, and most of the unopened ones are the sort that sit on a bench not getting stolen. Switch ate half a dropped bagel off the sidewalk before noon and did not remark on it once. I have been trying to count what came my way today and I keep losing the thread around the third or fourth thing.