It was long

It has been a long time since I took a bus ride alone. A long bus ride that is. So I sat at the last row of the upper deck, music plugged in and eyes wandering. I always have this fascination about neighbourhoods that is other than mine. I love to see how the different people in the different places going about their everyday life. The different people that enter or exit the bus at every stop all have their own story to tell. Perhaps this offers me the change in environment and experience that I so much crave for.

Rewind to an incident a couple of weeks back. I was at a store of The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf when I saw left struck with this image firmly in my mind. I didn’t have my notebook with me, so I penned this down instead.

A man who I estimated to be in his sixties was left in the store by his son and daughter-in-law while they went shopping with their toddler kid in tow. They bought an Ice Blended for him and after a brief conversation; they left, only to come back later to pick him. When I first interpreted that scene, I thought of it as one of concern of the son for his dad. His dad was walking with the aid of a walking stick. But I see in the man’s eyes, a troubled and lonely look; the very pair of eyes that he as seen the world with for over more than half a century. In his eyes he always seems to be waiting, waiting for what in the long run I do not know. But in that instance I can only guess that he is waiting for his son to come back. His gaze was always of nothing in particular, but from time to time again he would look at the entrance. His weather beaten face seems to be telling a story of a lifetime. The ice blended drink untouched the entire time.

Almost at the same instance, another family come in and sat at the table to my half right. They bring with them a little girl, a girl no older than two years old I supposed. While her mum was settling down with her, her dad ordered a similar ice blended drink to the elderly man, alongside with two slices of cheesecake. The little girl was in her own state of hyperactivity in the oversized couch as she shared a slice with her mum as her dad chomp down the other. Time to time again, she would look into my direction and giggling and grinning ever so innocently. It was beyond any of my facial control that in the end I smiled back at her. She showed me an expression laced with the emotion that I don’t think I will be able to find elsewhere, exclusive to the group known as toddler kids.

The stark contrast of the two scenes made it impossible to be missed; one that is of the elderly uncle who as just stepped into the twilight of his life while the little girl has barely began hers.

As the uncle’s family came to pick him up, he got up slowly from his seat and limped slowly off with them. It seems justified that his son had him in his best interests. As he exited the store, she had finished her cheesecake as well. Goodbye little girl J