meditative & joyful & magnanimous

While walking the dogs to work this morning I spotted another lady just ahead of us walking her two dogs.  Surprisingly, they weren't walking as fast as us and as we caught up to them I noticed that they weren't walking down the sidewalk in a straight line. Instead, they kept walking up and down driveways, where about halfway up, the lady dropped the leashes and left her dogs while she darted to the porches.

Ok, I thought, maybe she's distributing fliers even though it's just after 6 in the morning, and a bitterly cold morning at that, with wind chills just below 20 degrees.

But then I noticed she wasn't going up every driveway, sometimes even skipping two or three houses before walking up a random driveway.  As I caught up to her, a streetlight kindly lent its assistance and spotlighted her retreating silhouette as she walked up another driveway, picked up today's paper and took it to the porch.  

I contemplated helping her out, but I was on my way to work and therefore in a bit of a time crunch.  It was also clearly a meditative and joyful task not only for the lady, but also her dogs who thumped their tails loudly and happily each time she dropped the paper on the porch and hurried to pick up their leashes.  

As I passed them I did turn around to watch for just a bit longer because the task made me happy as well and quite jazzed up about being a part of this life and city and witnessing the thoughtfulness of this lady and her two helpers.