Here Nor There

The only thing that kept the whole trip from turning into a nightmare is the fact that I was in a good company. My travel partner, who is more like a little sister to me than an old time friend, and I didn't take the whole thing seriously, at times, even making fun of the situation.

At that point, there was nothing else we could do anyway. It was Christmas day and a lot of frustrated travelers were still stuck in train stations, their loved ones waiting at home, wishing that the date of 25th of December would stop ticking away until they see the awaited familiar faces at their doorsteps.

We were supposed to be home by yesterday after our short 2-day-trip to Brussels, the heart of EU and land of heavenly waffles, but Mother Nature was keen to have things go her way. Snow was pouring down hard since Christmas's eve, putting a damper on our journey. The trains were delayed at every possible station. And just like that, the European railway system that has always held a reputation of being reliable, crashed.

It has taken us 5 hours to end up at a station that is only an hour away from where we started, on any normal day. My body was shivering like mad, my fingers aching from the coldness, my head felt like it was going through a constant brain freeze, the kind you get when you drank Slurpee's in one big gulp, even though I was wearing the headscarf.

Finally the train that would save us had arrived. My friend and I hurriedly jumped on board and slumped ourselves on the next available seats we found. Outside, it was a hell of unforgiving, bitter coldness. Inside, it was warm. Heaven.

"Papa, are we on the right train?" A little passenger, with her father following right behind her, boarded the train and occupied the seats next to us.

"Yes, honey." Belgium has three main languages; French, Dutch and at certain part, German. The father/daughter were speaking in French. Luckily my friend knows the language. So she did all the translation for me.

"Are you sure?" The sceptic little girl, who couldn't have been older than 7 or 8 years-old said, asked her father again, her face scrunched up in an expression of genuine worry. Her short blonde hair framed her rounded face, her cheeks flaming red from the cold.

"Yup, pretty sure."

"Ohhh," she gasped, her stocky palm covering her wide-opened mouth, as if just remembering something important, "Did you remember to bring the ticket?"

"Oh, noo!" Her father, obviously playing along, pretended to be shocked and patted his pockets, searching for the ticket.

"No papa! The controller would kick us out!"

The girl was already freaking out, until her father produced a piece of paper from the inside pocket of his jacket, "Ta-da!"

She breathed a sigh of relief, loudly. Her father laughed and patted the top of her head, messing up her hair. She is, by far, the cutest, most matured little girl I have ever seen.

When I was that age, I believe that I did not yet possess the ability to worry about reality. I hope this bright little girl who was sitting next to me doesn't agonize over every single littlest thing in her life, that she can enjoy the carefree nature of her innocent years, which is what childhood is all about.

"Can you please ask the controller when he comes over if we are really on the right train, papa?" she asked, at which the father bursted in an even louder laugh. The little girl's antics throughout the journey kept her father laughing, both of them looked very happy and content, the delay in their journey didn't seem to matter, everything else didn't seem to matter, perhaps forgetting the fact that they were supposed to be somewhere else right now.

I looked outside the window of the moving train. Lost in my own reverie, it got me wondering, if I have ever made my father laughed like that at my own antics when I was still his little princess. I tried to remember, I tried hard, but to no avail. I did remember the time when he accompanied me to a coloring contest in LIMA Langkawi, just the two of us, though the memory was just fragments of details and snapshots. I wished I could remember the day in whole.

I wonder, if he remembered that day, or any other day that we spent together. I wonder, when he was still Here instead of There, if he had ever sat down on any given bad or good day, and let his mind wandered back to the time when I was a kid, and the memory made him chuckled, or at least, smiled.

I hope he had.

The train kept moving, taking us away and away from where we started and closer to where we were supposed to be.