This is the pattern: the tram stops at every arrêt and people get on and off, sometimes sitting next to you and sometimes choosing to stand.
This afternoon the pattern was the same. At Bossière two older women got on the tram and elected to sit in the vacant seats next to myself and Darryl. All during the ride from Bossière to Orvault Grand Val, I looked out the window to my left while listening intently to the five-minute conversation going on to my right and breathing in the scent of perfume cloying with muscle ointment.
The conversation was short and light, but the subject matter broke my heart. I didn't know all the words or who the people in the conversation were, but I picked up enough to know that the woman beside me knew people in Senegal who had just arrived there after a visit with her and that the woman beside Darryl's had a daughter also in Africa who hadn't called in over 6 months. This, apparently, is the norm. Both women talked about how their children don't call as much as they would both like and how the visits are becoming fewer and fewer.
Sitting there just to their left I thought about my own parents. We've grown distant with these continents between us. I don't call as much as I could or should. I tell myself that this is my push for independence before I come back and graduate from college and venture forth into the real world - but is this the truth? Or have I perhaps started to become like the children of these women?
I should call more. My cell phone has grown a layer of dust since I last used it.
This afternoon the pattern was the same. At Bossière two older women got on the tram and elected to sit in the vacant seats next to myself and Darryl. All during the ride from Bossière to Orvault Grand Val, I looked out the window to my left while listening intently to the five-minute conversation going on to my right and breathing in the scent of perfume cloying with muscle ointment.
The conversation was short and light, but the subject matter broke my heart. I didn't know all the words or who the people in the conversation were, but I picked up enough to know that the woman beside me knew people in Senegal who had just arrived there after a visit with her and that the woman beside Darryl's had a daughter also in Africa who hadn't called in over 6 months. This, apparently, is the norm. Both women talked about how their children don't call as much as they would both like and how the visits are becoming fewer and fewer.
Sitting there just to their left I thought about my own parents. We've grown distant with these continents between us. I don't call as much as I could or should. I tell myself that this is my push for independence before I come back and graduate from college and venture forth into the real world - but is this the truth? Or have I perhaps started to become like the children of these women?
I should call more. My cell phone has grown a layer of dust since I last used it.
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