Being separate from the people we love is sad. For me it was especially sad to be separated from my newborn baby girl for a long period of time. Every day I was counting the days of separation left and not the days of separation past. The past is ours no more and the future is not ours yet. We only have the present and it is in the present where we could choose how to deal with the past and with the future.
I have never lost contact with my baby girl during the time of our separation. I have been calling her every evening talking to her over the phone, experiencing her experiences at the daycare centre as well as her struggles not to drop food on the floor during her dinner times when usually I was calling home.
Finally, one day the separation time was over and I came back home. The first five minutes my daughter was a little bit distant looking from the photographs of me on the table and back to my face. She finally approached me and showed me her little hand where someone at the daycare placed a small sticker with a picture of a girl on it and said to me “princess”. I said to her “It is beautiful buy you are my princess and I love you very much”. She smiled and I smiled too.
Since then we can’t stay separated for too long and we are sad no more.
Friday 16 December 2011
The sad people in the subway
Riding the subway one morning, my Ipod touch battery died in the middle of a movie I was watching. Annoyed I removed the ear buds and looked around me in the overcrowded subway car. People were reading newspapers, looking into their mobile devices, no one talking, everyone avoiding eye contact. Serious and self absorbed people. I don't like the rush hour commute. No one likes it apparently.The commute time's sad.
The train has stopped at St. George station. A glossy commercial of impossibly beautiful, happy people prizing the qualities of products that make happiness possible at a nominal price were looking at the passengers. I looked again around me. The contrast of the people in the real world and the people in the we-all-wish-to-be there world stroke me.
An older gentleman looked up from his newspaper and our eyes met. I nodded politely. He returned the node automatically with that confused look "where do I know this person from" and made himself busy with the newspaper again. In my city everyone is polite.
The older gent made his way to the door at the next stop. Before leaving the train he looked back at me. This time I nodded and smiled at him. He (still confused) nodded and smiled back and disappeared in the crowd. At that moment I felt good. I made one person smile, I was smiling and suddenly the commute wasn't so sad.
The train has stopped at St. George station. A glossy commercial of impossibly beautiful, happy people prizing the qualities of products that make happiness possible at a nominal price were looking at the passengers. I looked again around me. The contrast of the people in the real world and the people in the we-all-wish-to-be there world stroke me.
An older gentleman looked up from his newspaper and our eyes met. I nodded politely. He returned the node automatically with that confused look "where do I know this person from" and made himself busy with the newspaper again. In my city everyone is polite.
The older gent made his way to the door at the next stop. Before leaving the train he looked back at me. This time I nodded and smiled at him. He (still confused) nodded and smiled back and disappeared in the crowd. At that moment I felt good. I made one person smile, I was smiling and suddenly the commute wasn't so sad.
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