A Wednesday Afternoon

Today, I left school early, walking to my bus at a faster rate than normal. Obviously walking to the bus stop faster does not mean that there will be a bus, or that one will arrive faster than usual. If anything, waiting time increases and you wonder if you had just missed one, or surely there must be one .....now? So I wait, and wait, checking the time, thinking it might rain, what have I forgotten, when a lady in her late forties wanders up to me. Well staggering would be a better description. She then touches my shoulders and kisses my check...yes these moments do happen to me. At first I thought oh no, but then inside something told me to just love her anyway. It was at that moment that I realise she was very very deaf, and had no speech at all. She signed various comments that i somehow managed to decipher thank you to Makaton signing during my supply moments. We also managed to have a conversation, I asked her where she was going, not sure what she actually replied, but I think home. She then thanked me for speaking to her, telling me that no one beautiful speaks to her.....It was at that moment that my heart broke, and every ounce of me fought to keep the tears back, despite my eyes welling over. I gave her a hug, and for a moment, the others at the bus must have thought....LOONY! I held her longer than I guess would be redeemed appropriate, but I could not let go. I watched her stagger down the street alone, with not much coordination or balance, and I thanked God for her sight. How sad to feel that you are not wanted, to feel that no one will want to look at you, to speak to you. How have become such a generation that allow people to think that is justified? So Wednesday became different, and somehow I am too.