I’m standing on the 5:40 red line north, phone plugged into my ears not playing anything in particular. The car is quiet but for the muffled wind howling in the tunnel. We come to a stop, and a fretting mother gets on pushing a stroller. The girl looks to be about two, but seems happy enough to not make a disturbance. Her pigtailed head swivels across the inward facing seats. She waves to a woman sitting a few sets down, who takes a moment to realize and looks down and returns the wave. The girl smiles and turns to the next chair and repeats the gesture, this time to an older man. He had noticed when it was the woman’s turn, so leans forward slightly and dutifully reciprocates. The girl continues down the line, taking each passenger in turn from her seat. Her eyes, big in her head, look expectantly, attentively for that moment.
Perhaps she waved not understanding it as a greeting, but simply something that is returned by those upon whom she gazes. How magical it must seem to have such power. Not power maybe, but a self-created acknowledgement. A ray cast in the darkness and reflected equally. No, not only is the wave returned, but the object of her attention brightens and so amplifies her power. Not power maybe, but innocence, hopefulness or perhaps happiness most of all. A gift given, returned and felt warmly and wholly back.
The girl’s mother is now rummaging through a bag resting underneath the stroller and I can’t help but feel distressed that she is missing something so extraordinary. I look back, to find the girl waiting for me. I blink. I had been watching before, so really had no excuse for being as startled as I was, but I really hadn’t been expecting it. She waves for what must be the second time. Her elbow wobbles a little clumsily and her body rocks a little with the motion. She was sat forward a bit to make sure I would see, her face, leaned in, was unwavering. I wave quietly, hand kept close. Now she smiles, again. And continues.
My stop arrives, I depart feeling a bit of what I used to think was emptiness, but now I think it’s a swollenness. Too big, too full, or blown up as to reduce my sight to squinting. No, seeing more, but out of focus. Eyes bursting out of my head, able to see in all directions but only picking out the movement. A window without the lens of novelty. To be a man upon whom so much time, food, education, and love has been invested and yet worthless in light of this child, now absent of her. How strange it was to reach out so blindly as she.
What I have witnessed is surely of critical importance. There must be such a moment in each of our lives. When that great realization of being an actor in the history of God’s vast plain is taken hold of fondly. To cross the threshold from feeling to being felt. And what if a child had missed such a reckoning. To cast out and be bitten or ignored, rather than waved to. How terrible it would be. To be lost amid the tide. Who could be blamed for thrashing about.
Yes, certainly, she had just taken her first steps. But her mother wouldn’t get home and tell her father about it. It wasn’t filmed. The child was too young for the memory to last. I would be the only one to hold on to it. How strange it was.
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from Short Stories https://ift.tt/2Ejhy6R
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