There is a type of love I don’t understand – the love of a dependent; a child, or an invalid.
The scene is this.
It’s Christmas Day.
My mother father sister and I are sitting in a rest stop McDonalds. Mother father and sister are eating quarter pounders. I’ve got my lips around a medium mccoffee, not drinking it, just feeling the heat.
From my peripheral vision comes this amorphous figure, a boy with a lolling expression slinking towards the bathroom. He’s floating, galloping forward, with extraterrestrial jubilation. A tall man is walking behind, supporting him. The boy’s feet on his feet, the boy’s arms on his arms. His grey against the boy’s bright blue. He is smiling too, oblivious to the heads starting to turn toward them.
I too, am staring; a freezing wave flushes from where my lips touch the coffee lid: some feeling between the categories of fear and love.
Sister points and asks what is THAT.
Dad looks and says we’re lucky that’s not you.
I left unsaid but they seem happier than everyone else.
The Asian families to the left and right of us are doing the polite thing: not staring, emitting pity with their silence and downcast eyes. Then there’s two trucker guys directly in front of me, looking on silently with contorted faces. The younger of the two especially: his face is red and wrinkles are sprouting from the lines of his eyes–his mouth drooping to an O.
I look a way for a moment and he’s crying. The older one’s mouth is moving but I can’t hear him. He’s probably speaking soft, comforting things. I wonder what private anguish the boy and his father invoked.
