End To End

I got on the bus with one of the two bags I was carrying dragging behind me, fumbled out my pass and finally settled onto the long seat across the back. She sat on the far end of the bench and pretended not to see me. Her face was turned upwards, into the sunlight, with a concentrated look of sophistication that turned my heart inside out. I could see the decision to turn and look at me weave its way across her forehead and she said, “Oh, hello. How are you?” We exchanged pleasantries for a few minutes, just like people do who don’t know each other, until I caught a concerned look from a woman sitting in a seat across from me. I reached over and pulled her to me and she exploded in a riot of laughter and I hugged her to me as she cried, “Dad, You’re not supposed to know me.”

From end to end the galaxy exists only as a question in my mind. The other big ones, like, ‘Why?’ and ‘What if?’ float around, nebulous and cloud-like as I struggle to hold onto whatever will I have left. I am told that the gift of curiosity can also be a curse and I believe it. Do I want to know the answers? I do, if only to calm her fears and make everything easier for her. It was so very easy then. The questions were small, in a child’s voice, to the point and I knew the answer to every one of them. She knows now that we are learning our lessons together and I ask her as many as she asks me.

The bus ride was long and over the years we took it often. The sense of time passing was lost on me until one day, in the middle of a story I was telling her, a long and rambling one that I had forgotten the point to, she put a finger to my lips and said, “Let’s play the silence game.” She wore a smile that turned my heart inside out again. I had to laugh, too, because I never win that game.