We are clay

"They complain of
everything while
doing nothing - my children", 
the old woman in front of me
lamented as she pulled her
groceries from the cart and 
squeezed them onto the already
piled high conveyer belt,
"they are lazy, and won't get
jobs - yet complain if I ask them
to take out the garbage. I can't tell them
their father is in jail, they think he's dead,
a war hero."
I nod sagely, and my silence is
license for her to continue and she
does, all the way up to the smiling checker, 
and without a backward glance,
once bags are filled and groceries are paid,
she's gone.
My husband tells me I have
one of those faces, whatever that means,  
that invites complete strangers 
to confide in me, but the 
truth is, I am interested 
in everyone's story.
Behind every face given to the world,
there are stories - messy, muddy, 
squishy with the events that they
experienced, regardless of whose
to blame - who started what - 
who was weak or strong, 
right or wrong. 
I have heard some hair-raising things
from people, almost as if we had stepped
into a virtual confessional, just us, 
and their deepest, darkest secret
just pops from their mouths, and 
having told someone, me,
they are now lighter, a weight lifted,
as if I am a dispenser of "indulgences" 
to them on their pilgrimages, or perhaps like
the "sin eaters" that I have read 
about from eastern cultures -
sometimes it seems more bragging than
confiding - like the person who needs
to turn their sins into badges of their 
accomplishments. 
And what I have learned from 
the decades of family secrets,
improbable choices, and odd
moral compasses, is that the clay of
humankind can create masterpieces 
or shattered scraps of a life,
and we are all sculptors, 
hands sticky with our lives and the lives of others,
either playing, building and creating; 
breaking, cracking, and destroying;
or allowing someone else to mold us.
And usually, it is a bit of all of those actions.