I had that thing happen to me again today. I sat down for a bit in the sun to kill some time before an appointment. As I was sitting down the older gentleman beside me asked if I was Spanish. I countered with a simple no. He then asked me where I was from and I coyly replied with my birth city, Winnipeg. He looked back at me. I felt the time tick by, one beat two beats so I fessed up my ethnic origin (which is what he was clearly after) to which he had no response but he must have been okay with it because he launched into further conversation without comment.
He was a widower and his wife had died of breast cancer. He then told me he had battled cancer no less than 4 times, and surgery had been enough intervention on each occasion to beat it. “Asbestos”, he said had been the likely cause. He had worked in construction all his life after he emigrated to Vancouver from Winnipeg. “The weather, too…”. I nodded. We had a tacit understanding. Say no more. Any Canadian knows.
He was about to ask me something else when someone he knew happened along. It seemed like the conversation had come to its natural conclusion anyway so I stood to go. He waved a genial goodbye and continued his new conversation. It was probably more time than I intended to spend idly chatting to a complete stranger but the result couldn’t be faulted. It had put a smile on my face. That casual brushing up against humanity was definitely good for the soul.
d.
every day is d. day 