Angela at the Grocery Store

Angela, the cashier at Hannafords has a soft voice. You can barely hear it above the beeping of the scanner as she registers our bananas, our milk. But she pauses for a second and checks out Em who is laughing, mouth open.

“Oh!” the cashier squees. “I love your braces.”

Em’s mouth slams shut.

But the cashier? She notices the change. She notices the effect her comment had on Em’s 13-year-old self esteem.

She journeys on. “I love them, really. They are so cute. The brackets are all different colors.”

“Yeah,” Em manages. She pales. She hates her braces.

“And your teeth are going to be so nice when you get them off.” The cashier rings in some Annie’s macaroni and cheese. “Really.”

Em nods. She bags the box. “I know.”

She half smiles, but she still doesn’t open her mouth wide enough to see her teeth.

The cashier lady finishes up, helps up bag while the credit card processes. Then she looks up at Em. It’s a long, look. It’s a sweet look. Then she says, “You know something?”

She doesn’t wait for Em to answer. She continues on. “You know, you are a beautiful girl. You’re just really lovely. It’s stunning.”

Em smiles and her winter pale cheeks red up a little. “Oh… thanks.”

Angela presses her lips together, pulls a receipt out of some machine. The transaction is completed. We haul our canvas bags full of groceries over our shoulders. We’re ready to go. But the cashier pauses for a second. Em pauses too.

“I mean it,” she says. Her eyes are beautiful. They look right into Em. “You are.”

When we’re walking out of the store, Em bops a little bit even though the sky is gray, the parking lot is full of slush. She bops and says to me, “That lady is really nice.”

She is.

That lady made my daughter feel special. They don’t know each other. They don’t know each other’s names, although they can probably recognize each other in the cereal aisle. Still, Angela took her time to make sure that Em left the grocery store feeling good about herself.

That woman is my hero.

I can tell you one thing, if you go into Hannaford’s you’ll be able to find her. She has short, thick brown hair, plucked eyebrows and pretty eyes. But the way you’ll really be able to find her is the way she’ll look at you. She won’t look at you like you’re a customer. She’ll look at you like you’re a person.

And that’s a rare enough trait now-a-days that it makes her one of my favorite heroes.