Quotes

  • Whether the pitcher hits the rock, or the rock hits the pitcher, it's going to be pretty bad for the pitcher. - Sancho Panza, in Don Quixote

Thursday, February 12, 2009

Great love has no one...

I saw this years ago but can never think of love without remembering this scene.

I was at the light rail station waiting for the train home late in the afternoon one September day. On the platform across the tracks a man held a sleeping boy and walked slowly up and down the platform. The child looked to be three or four years old, and the man was not tall. The boy’s head rested on the man’s shoulder, his legs swung gently, his feet were level with the man’s knees.

The tenderness of the scene was unmistakable. The pair was on their way somewhere and the boy was tired. The father carried him to help comfort him to sleep, and walked back and forth to sooth him. I watched them for a quarter hour until my train came, captured by the scene of complete love.

But what made the scene iconic was not the living figures but an ignored object. Against the bench behind the pair leaned a heavy cane, and the father walked with a heavy, labored limp.

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