The Beauty of Connection

The Beauty of Connection

The first time I saw him, I was on the bus and utterly hungover. Each bump in the street had my stomach lurching. I must have looked like the most miserable person who ever rode the bus. But he was the opposite.

He sat at the back of the bus, his long, brown fingers writing carefully in a leather-bound black book. He sat smack in the middle, on the elevated bench in the farthest row back, with a clear view of all of the commuters - the strange community that formed only between 13th and 15th street, only on a dreary Tuesday at 9:37 in the morning: a cross section of lower class Edmonton with sun streaming onto their faces, highlighting the circulating dust motes in the air and turning their skin golden. He sat right in the centre and looked over everyone like the eyes of god, like the eyes of TJ Eckleburg, looking like the eyes of any other judge to me, wanting to remain unseen.

But this man, with his wrinkled leathery skin and warm, watery brown eyes, did not judge that sorry version of me. Rather, he smiled, and the cracks around his eyes became endearing, like the cracks in ginger snap cookies. I paused in my self pity and smiled back, but only for a second, as we hit another bump and I nearly lost my breakfast. And he paused as well, only for a second, so as to not muddle his writing.

But in that pause, as our eyes met, he pulled a peppermint from his pocket and tossed it to me. I popped it gratefully into my mouth without a second thought. The zing of cold helped settle my stomach and I survived the rest of the ride.

That bus full of people, all witnessing my disgraced defeat from last night’s happy hour, were not a community to me as they seemed to be under the old man’s gaze. I stumbled off the bus at 27th street and into a day of mediocrity much like every other, the old man’s smile lingering in my mind. There must have been two dozen people on that bus; I only remembered him.

I was eager to see him the following day and took a rear-facing seat, but the seat he had previously occupied was glaringly empty. I stared at it, wondering who he was and why he had chosen me.

Of course the cynic in my head reminded me that he hadn’t chosen me. I was so glaringly lonely from the year of quarantine that I was making up relationships with old men on the bus.

When Cara left me, in the harshest days of the lockdown, I felt the world come crashing down. Our once cozy apartment echoed with her absence and the ghosts of happy memories lurked in every corner. At least the bus was better than that.

He boarded at 12th street and walked straight to his seat at the back of the bus, comfortable in a camel-brown suit and red-striped tie. He removed a matching red-ribboned fedora as he sat, and I noticed that he carried a tortoise shell cane. His beard had once been black but the aging powers of white now inched up his coffee coloured cheeks.

My heart leapt when I saw him, but it wasn’t until he sat down that he saw me. I waved shyly, probably looking like a kindergartner which, to be fair, was better than looking drunk...

He smiled back, eyes crinkling. The morning light streamed in and made us all more present; even me. We had been taught in the last year to socially distance, to avoid contact, to be ashamed for wanting to be with those we loved. But that was over now.

“Hello, sir,” I said holding out my hand. “I’m Joanna, Jo really, I wanted to thank you for the peppermint yesterday, it really saved me.”

“Hello, Jo,” he said. “It’s nice to meet you.” His voice sounded like cinnamon, like the smell of apple cider at the old log cabin after cross country skiing with my parents in Northern Alberta. He sounded like home.

“May I ask what you’re writing?” I asked, pointing at the black book in his hand, awkwardly trying to make conversation.

“Not yet,” he winked.

“Fair enough,” I laughed. There was a short silence as we watched the other passengers.

“You look happier today,” he said.

“Well the sun is shining and the hangover isn’t ravaging my body,” I responded, twisting my mouth into a grimace at the memory.

He nodded, curling arthritic fingers smoothly and painlessly around his book. “I do love the good days.”

“Me too,” I said. I knew at that moment that it was probably the first good day I’d had since before the pandemic, since before Cara left, since before I left the job I loved for a job that paid more. It was a good day; I had been seen.

The following day I was armed with peppermint macarons, homemade with a love and energy that I hadn’t felt in months. I chose a seat facing his; it waited empty until he boarded on 12th street.

“Good morning, Jo,” he said as he sat, black book in his lap once again, hands crossed over it, holding it close.

“Good morning. You didn’t tell me your name yesterday,” I said with a smile, leaning back into the slight velvety material that covered the hard plastic of the chair.

“Well, funnily enough, my name is Mo. Jo & Mo, we must be a Broadway show!” he said.

“The Mojo’s!” I grinned, holding out my container of macarons. “I made these for our bus ride.” He made a sound somewhere between “oh” and “mmm,” and I felt appreciated and worth something.

He patted the seat next to him. “Come sit beside me, Jo.”

I moved to sit beside him at our place of observation at the back of the bus. From this vantage point we could see everyone.

‘Everyone’ included a woman with a newborn. Her loose, pastel clothing blended into the baby blanket as she rocked the baby back and forth, singing a soothing melody in a language I didn’t understand but comforted me anyways.

‘Everyone’ included a teenager with numerous nose piercings heavily juxtaposed against a crisp maroon school uniform. Her feet were up on another seat as she stared out at the city around us, dreaming of escape, of differentiating herself, of independence.

‘Everyone’ included a middle aged man with salt and pepper hair who wore a coat with elbow patches. He read a manuscript with a highlighter in his month, chuckling and frowning at different parts of the story, content in his reality.

Sunlight streamed in, casting halos on the left side of the bus where the hopeful, the dreamers, the warm people sat. The dark side of the bus held only two people: a man with his head dropped into his hands, staring at the floor… and me.

“I’ve been sitting on the dark side of the bus for a long time,” I said quietly.

“I did, too, for a while,” Mo responded, taking a bite of macaron.

“How did you get out?” I asked, looking at him.

His eyes roamed over the community of bus 145. He smiled his crinkly eyed smile. “I didn’t, really; I just moved to the middle. I get both the light and the dark here at the back. I can see everyone in these small moments of ‘in between’ in their lives. I like this spot.”

I rode the bus with Mo all summer. I watched the sun light up the beautiful, average people, soaking in the love of an ever changing community. And I was part of that community because I had Mo.

Mo was 78. He had been a caretaker of Edmonton parks for most of his life. He was married but had never had children. Mo was born in a tiny town in Alberta, so small that he said the name didn’t matter. Edmonton had been his big adventure.

“... well, Edmonton and Rania,” he finished, cinnamon voice fading, hands trembling.

“Rania?” I asked, leaning so that I could meet his eyes even as they dropped to his book.

“The woman at the end of the bus ride. My wife,” he said, and tapped the book. “I write this for her.”

“Oh?” I examined the worn leather cover more closely. “What do you write about?”

He gave a sad smile. “I write about all of the beautiful things I see in my very ordinary life, and then I sit with her and read them out to her so that she knows… I don’t know if she hears me, or understands me, but she knows I’m there. And that is enough.” He spoke at a slow, measured pace. I reached out and held his hand, tears in my eyes.

“What is your adventure Jo?” he asked.

“I don’t think I have one anymore,” I said.

He furrowed his eyebrows and shook his head. “How can someone as lovely as you not have something lovely to share with the world?”

I snorted and bit my lip. “Maybe share this again,” he said, handing me the last cookie out of the tupperware container.

When the leaves turned and it started to get cold, I took a later shift at work. It was harder for Mo to get up the hospice stairs to see Rania, so I began walking him up before heading off to work. Every day I left him at the door and he went in to her side.

I could see Mo slowing, but I didn’t admit it to myself. He had shown me beauty in the mundane, the ordinary; the beauty of connection. He had reminded me what it was like to care for another person and how to care for myself. When he was admitted into long term care, in the hospice beside Rania, I would visit him as often as I could. I told him about the beautiful things in my life every day.

Winter came hard and fast, and I was sitting at my office desk typing dull numbers into dull boxes when a man in a black suit, black polished shoes and a black briefcase knocked on my door.

“Joanna Myers?” he asked.

“Yes, that’s me,” I nodded.

“I have some items bequeathed to you by Morris Williams,” he said.

Tears jumped involuntarily into my eyes as my heart dropped. “Oh Mo… when did he pass?” I tried to ignore my hitched breathing.

“Two nights ago,” the lawyer said gently, aware that I was hearing this news for the first time. “He left you this.”

I motioned to a chair and he sat across from me, opening his briefcase. He pulled out the familiar cracked, black leather book and offered it to me. I took it gently, stroking the front and feeling that it was such a small thing, it seemed impossible that it held so much love.

I was lost in thought and jumped when the lawyer spoke again. “He also left you some money. Please sign here.”

I signed and he handed me a cheque for $20,000. The memo read “For your bakery adventure.”

The bell above my door tinkled as my last customer left for the day. I flipped a light switch and the fluorescent “MoJo’s Macarons” sign blinked into darkness. I looked over my little shop with pride; I was tired, dusted in flour, and utterly content. Pulling Mo's book of the beautiful ordinary from the till, I flipped it open to a random, well worn page, as I did every day. But today I came across my favourite passage: The sad, lost looking young lady with blue eyes and blonde hair looked up and smiled at me today. Her name is Joanna and there is magic in her eyes. I am excited to see her tomorrow.