“You can’t use too much water or it will be slippery.”

A stooped gentleman swipes his mop in between chair legs and around a table leg in deft arcs. The air is rich with donut scents from rows of fritters and glazed, cakes and old-fashioned.

“Now you try.”

The old man offers the mop handle to a lanky teen in a donut shop apron. Until now, the kid has been moving along beside the man moving displays and replacing them at his command. The boy grasps the mop and scrubs in and out, forward and back. 

The owner in tight by his side. 

“Remember the S-motion.”

The young man adds a curve in his swiping. It proves transformative. 

The wet streaks immediately look better. His movements take on the appearance of competence. He is doing mop the floor and no longer just dragging graying ropy tendrils across reddish brown tile. He may not know the why, certainly has barely grasped the how. But, there is simplicity in his movement. In simplicity lies beauty.

I imagine myself as a teen—and oh, I was lanky at his age. I picture this encounter through the unassailable lens of youth. Conversations with my grandfather, my step-dad. Where hands go on a steering wheel, stacking firewood in autumn, backing a trailer with the tractor, changing an oil filter.

It is mopping. Must it be so complicated? 

Is this kid hoping to be left alone so he can simply get through his shift? Does he feel any appreciation for the care and precision one can employ in such a task? Soon he is left to his mopping. The owner moves behind the counter to confer with one of the other young men filling my order. They discuss croissants cooking just beyond a single swinging door off the narrow lobby. The owner asks several questions in a low voice and nods an unsmiling affirmative.

This employee evinces more confidence and I wonder how he handles a mop.

My donuts sit boxed on the counter and I pay. I thank the men and step cautiously back toward the front door. 

I feel culpable having trampled the wet floor, proof and guarantor of a never-ending process, the inevitable next lesson in mopping, a testimony to the smooth arc of experience and beauty.