Curiosity and Judgment
When the speaker arrives at the filling station, they are entirely averse to the place. They note only what is unappealing about it—its dirtiness and its associations with an unromantic working-class milieu. Indeed, the speaker even notes that one should be careful with matches around the oil-soaked filling station, in an aside phrased as a command—suggesting that their attitude is primarily one of caution and defensiveness. Yet they come to see the station as a place of beauty. Crucially, curiosity drives this transition from disinterest to affection. Initially that curiosity consists of mere visual observation. This visual observation clues the speaker in to objects she at first ignored, such as a begonia plant. The awareness of these objects causes the speaker to ask questions about the nature and origin of their surroundings, which in turn brings them to the logical conclusion that they are maintained through loving acts of domestic care.
Love and Family
The speaker concludes that the family running the filling station, though they do not express it in any explicit way, are bound together by love. That love is legible in the continued existence of items whose only purpose is ornament, comfort, and beautification—a plant, a doily. These objects must have been created through someone's hard and consistent work. The person who waters the plant and crochets a decorative doily, the speaker thinks, does so out of a desire to improve the lives of their loved ones, meaning that the presence of such objects is evidence of love. Love, therefore, can be discerned even in the most uninspiring places. Moreover, the types of work involved here (such as crocheting) are traditionally feminine ones. No female figure is seen in the poem, suggesting that both familial love and feminine labor are often invisible and discounted.
