"A fellow will remember a lot of things you wouldn't think he'd remember," says Mr. Bernstein in "Citizen Kane."  It's a famous quote from a famous movie with lots of famous moments, but it's the one I think about the most.  He tells of seeing a girl once, on a ferry, wearing a white dress and carrying a white parasol. 

"I only saw her for one second. She didn't see me at all, but I'll bet a month hasn't gone by since that I haven't thought of that girl."

I can't be the only one who feels the resonance here, who understands.  It isn't about lost love, or missed chances, or middle-aged regret; it's about the stories we sensed for a second, then moved on.  We never heard the rest, understood the background or closed the last page.  We just saw, for a short time, a glimpse of another person's life.

I have dozens of these; you probably do, too.  I think of them as Samuel Beckett moments  - no exposition, no notes, no explanations or tidy endings.  We just see a short scene and then it's over, and we have to muse about all the rest, and sometimes for the rest of our lives.

Some of mine are charming, vignettes of happiness.  I remember seeing a little girl, maybe 2 or 3, in a store with her father, long before I became a parent.  She held up a toy she wanted, her dad nudged her toward the salesperson, and I began filling in the details.

She had an allowance.  No, wait  - she had some birthday money, that's it, and her dad was taking her shopping for something special.  He wanted to give her a little lesson in how the world works, so he had her ask the question.

"Please," she said to the lady behind the counter, holding up her toy.  "How much does... does this... weigh?"

Oh, come on.  Admit it.  Your cute button got pushed.  I was maybe 19 years old, and mine did.  Cost, weigh, whatever, my dad knows what I mean.  Years later I'd be in the same situation, and now more years have passed since I have been, but like Mr. Bernstein I'll bet a month doesn't go by that I don't think of that little girl.

Some are less fun.  Some haunt me a little, worry me.  Some I just wonder about.  And some move me, in surprising ways.

It was a year or so ago.  I was doing a nocturnal shopping run, nothing unusual about that; in a house run on finely-tuned disorganization, the absence of milk for morning cereal is nearly always noted about the time David Letterman starts his monologue.

Being a nocturnal person, I don't mind.  It's less congested, there's always a convenient parking spot, and if suddenly the urge for ice cream strikes me, well.  Being out and about has its benefits.
I've had my share of Beckett moments late at night in grocery stores.  There's lot of passion and intrigue just shy of midnight in the produce section, trust me.  A couple of times I thought I was going to have to call a cop.

On the down side, staff is light late at night, and someone with a full cart can muck up the flow.  On this one particular night I'm thinking of, as I approached to check out, I saw a serious shopper.  His cart was almost overflowing with frozen foods.  The kind with labels that said, "Lean" and "Healthy"; you know what I'm talking about.  And this was a guy who hadn't seen a weight in the lower 300-pound range in awhile, I guessed.  A very big guy.
 
And it struck me that this was an easy joke, a New Yorker cartoon with a caption that said, "Tomorrow's the big day!"  Accessible humor, the stuff that makes us laugh.

And it also struck me that I wasn't laughing.  That I was, in fact, at the moment aware of an odd feeling that I was almost in holy territory, that maybe I should take my shoes off or kneel.

I'm not talking about obesity, although I thought, maybe, when I started this I was.

I'm talking about dark mornings, about days that never end, about panic and fear and worry.  I'm talking about the stuff we all see and suffer with, if we live any kind of normal life, whether it's the result of some choice or random acts of bad luck.  I'm talking about how we keep going.

This poor man hadn't stopped trying.  He had a grocery cart full of hope.

And I had another Beckett or Bernstein moment, one I take out and look at from time to time.  I wished him well, hoped that he had some success, but mostly he reminded me that surely there are qualities I admire more than perseverance in the face of adversity; I just couldn't think of any at the moment.