It was late afternoon, and I was on my way home from work. My thoughts were already circling around what still needed to be done – a load of laundry, dinner, the usual to-dos that accumulate at the end of a workday. I stood at the traffic light waiting, half present, half already in my head with the rest of the evening.
"I'm going to drum lessons now."
The voice came from the side. It took me a moment to grasp that someone was speaking to me. I looked down. Large blue eyes gazed up at me expectantly. There stood a little girl, maybe ten years old. Until that moment, I hadn't noticed her at all.
"Oh," I said, pulled from my thoughts, but curious. "Drums. That's interesting."
The light turned green. We started walking, and she stayed beside me. Now I really saw her: the gray hat from under which long blonde hair peeked out, braided into a ponytail. A dusty rose hoodie, light blue jeans. And those eyes – clear, alert, as if she knew exactly what she wanted.
"How long have you been playing?"
"Two years," she said. Her tone was surprisingly grown-up, very certain. As if she had long since found her place.
We walked on, side by side. The conversation developed on its own.
"And do you want to become a musician later?", I asked.
"No." She shook her head without hesitation. "I want to become a gardener."
I almost stopped. A gardener? I really hadn't expected that. Playing drums – already unusual. But then wanting to become a gardener? She said it with such matter-of-factness that no doubt remained.
"A gardener," I repeated. "That's... that's wonderful. What would you grow?"
Her eyes lit up. "Zucchini! And eggplants. I like them best."
And then she began to tell me. How to plant zucchini, when the right time is, how much sun they need. She explained it to me as if she had done it countless times, as if she were already in the middle of her future life. Then came the eggplants – how best to prepare them, cut into slices, salt them, then fry them in a pan.
"I made that with my mama," she said. "I often help with cooking."
I listened and marveled. Here walked a ten-year-old girl beside me, talking about growing vegetables and recipes as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Not a word about phones, about television, about apps. Instead: drums, zucchini. Eggplants. Kitchen. Earth. One surprise after another.
We walked together for maybe ten, maybe fifteen minutes. I asked questions, she answered, kept talking, as if we had known each other for a long time. As if it were completely normal for a stranger and a child to talk about gardening and food on the way home.
Suddenly she stopped.
"I have to go this way," she said, pointing to a side street. "Bye!"
"Bye," I said. But she had already turned around, turned off and walked down the street. The braid swung cheerfully in rhythm with her steps.
I stood still and watched her as she grew smaller in the distance. A smile spread across my face, and at the same time I was speechless.
A girl on her way to drum lessons, with plans for zucchini and eggplants. And the naturalness with which she had simply started a conversation. I didn't even know her name – and yet this quarter hour, begun so unexpectedly and ended so abruptly, had touched something in me.
My heart was warm. It felt like a gift. That this child had opened up to me like that, just like that, at a traffic light. That such moments still existed.
My smile remained.
B.
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