AT THE BUS STOP

I was taking the city bus home – not because I wanted to, but because I had no car at the time.  Feeling poor and anticipating a long, hot walk to my apartment once I reached my bus stop, I was roused from self-pitying thoughts as I observed a woman and her little daughter get off the bus at their stop.  The mother had to re-enter the bus a couple of times to pick up all the bags of groceries she had stashed behind the bus driver’s seat.   Then through the window I saw her set down the last of the bags on the pile she had made on the sidewalk.  Turning to her daughter, who was only about three years old, she slipped the handles of her bulky black purse over the child’s neck, so that the purse hung on her like a cumbersome necklace.   Slowly the mother gathered up the bulging bags of groceries in both hands, and the two trudged off down the sidewalk together, each bearing the burden of the other.  Somehow, my own walk home from the bus stop that day didn’t seem so long.