An incident on a train one day—drawn from a conversation between a mother and a little girl...

#nana56b


Lines from the story

My daughter will be four this year. My wife
left home right after giving birth to her,
so my daughter has no memory of her mother.

Days went by like that, avoiding talking about
her mother, until one day...

I was on a crowded train during my commute.
Next to me sat a little girl, probably
kindergarten age, with a young woman who
seemed to be her mother. Their laughter filled
the car, and I found myself smiling too. I
wondered if my daughter would laugh so
innocently if my wife were still here...

Just then, a woman with one arm boarded the
train. The moment she sat across from us, the
little girl exclaimed loudly.

“Mommy, why doesn't that lady have a hand?”
Her voice echoed through the car.

My heart skipped a beat, and I looked away
from the woman and the mother-daughter pair.


But the mother, without flinching, spoke to her
daughter in a gentle voice.

“There are all kinds of people. Not everyone
is the same. You don't have a grandpa or grandma,
do you, Mai-chan?”

The girl nodded immediately. “Yeah, everyone
else has them, but I don't have a grandpa or
grandma, do I?”

The mother smiled as she continued. “There are
all kinds of people, but not having grandparents
isn't your fault, is it, Mai-chan?”

“Yeah, it's not. Oh, Yui-chan doesn't have a dad
either.”

The mother said softly, “That's right. But that's
not Yui-chan's fault either, is it?”

The girl nodded vigorously and replied, “Yeah,
it's not!”

“So you see, everyone isn't the same. Everyone has
things they have and things they don't have. But
you know, just because someone doesn't have
something, it doesn't mean they're bad, and it
doesn't mean they're any different from anyone else.”



Her mother's words were simple, yet they pierced
deeply into my heart.

The woman without arms smiled quietly, and the other
passengers watched the mother and daughter's exchange
with warm eyes.

I felt ashamed of myself for looking away earlier.

That mother and child on the train seemed to teach me
something important about parenting.

And I wished for my daughter, even without a mother,
to grow into an adult who would never look away
(who wouldn't be ashamed).