Waiting
Another old story. I wrote this one four years ago.
I stood at the bus stop with cool rain droplets running down my body. I wasn’t
standing at one of those bus stops with the glass shelters. I was standing,
waiting, next to a blue bus sign on a metal pole sticking out of the ground. I was
in unfamiliar territory, open to the rain and whatever else wanted to rain down on
me. The ground was soggy. If I stood there any longer I could see myself sinking
into the ground. I must have been standing there for an hour. Waiting for a bus
that I had been told would be coming in twenty minutes. Or had the person said
the bus had stopped running twenty minutes ago? I didn’t know, I didn’t have a
watch and every person I had made contact with seemed to be speaking a
foreign language.
I searched the road for an approaching bus and found a grinning lady of
indefinite age standing beside me. She held up a closed umbrella to me. I looked
at it questioningly. What was this lady doing carrying around a closed umbrella?
She pushed the umbrella closer to my face. Her grin widened causing lines to
spider out of the corners of her eyes and around her mouth. How old was she?
Despite the lines in her face her skin didn’t hang loosely and she had a youthful
energy that would over power any effect gravity had on her face. Her hair was
grey, yet her eyes luminous. I wanted to ask her how old she was but my mother
had told me several years ago on her birthday never to ask a lady how old she
was.
We stood silently in the rain, side by side, until her cool collective manor with
the rain dripping down her long strands of grey hair started to disturb me.
“Don’t you want to stand under the umbrella, out of the rain?” I broke the
silence.
“The rain has never caused me any real harm,” I was shocked at the sound of
her voice as she responded. Her voice had a low calming quality that reminded
me of a lullaby.
“I’m all wet,” I commented stupidly.
She looked me up and down, “I hear humans are somewhere around 75%
water anyway.”
She had a steady gaze that bore into me and wouldn’t let me run away, like I
kept feeling I should. “I guess I’m wet already, so it doesn’t matter that I have an
umbrella now,” I commented.
“No, there is no reason for you not to stop the rain from falling on you,” she
said knowingly.
“How old are you?” I finally asked, disregarding my mother’s advice.
She shrugged, “What age do you want me to be?”
It was my turn to shrug, “I don’t know, no age.” She seemed to like that
answer. She turned her face skyward and let the rain pour down on her. I wanted
to be her; she looked so joyful. I cautiously closed the umbrella and looked
skyward to see whatever she saw. The rain felt nice. Or rather my defiance of the
rain felt nice. I started to spin in circles. As I got dizzier and dizzier, no thought ofstopping ever crossed my mind. I fell. I got back up and continued to spin. I wanted to be just like this. Me, not the umbrella lady. Part of everything yet in
defiance of whatever everything had been before.
I didn’t realize the bus was coming until it had stopped and its doors had
opened. I hopped on. The lady with no age didn’t follow.
“Aren’t you coming?” I asked. Hadn’t she been waiting for this bus?
"No,” she shook her head good-naturedly.
I smiled, in some way I understood. I sat down in the bus and tried to
remember what had happened to the umbrella. Every one of the few people on
the bus reminded me of the lady. Not because of physical characteristics but
because of a certain air everyone and everything seemed to have just taken on.