The next day I walked down the same road again. Once more I didn’t know why, for I felt that what I had done the day before was all I had been there for. The man wasn’t sitting in the garden that day, but I could see some young people sitting in the meadow in front of the house. I decided to take the path along the house to sneak a peek at who they were, but as I walked past them one of them called my name. I got scared – the man wasn’t there and even if he had been I had never told him nor his daughter my name. As for what considered his daughter I had never even spoken to her. When I turned around however I realized it was on old friend of mine whom I hadn’t seen in quite a while.
She told me to come and sit with them, which I did although I felt uncomfortable – I kept asking myself where the man’s daughter was and if she didn’t mind me sitting there with her and her friends. A weird feeling I know, for only a day earlier I hadn’t thought about intruding into her home for a single moment and now I wasn’t even entering the house. I sat down and the other people introduced themselves. I didn’t know any of them, although I had a sense of déjà-vu with some.
I asked where the man’s daughter was and got told that she were inside getting some drinks. As soon as I had gotten the answer she came out of the frontdoor with a couple of bottles in her hand. She passed behind me and sat down some forty-five degrees anti-clockwise away from me in the circle we had spontaneously formed. I chatted with the people sitting next to me – my old friend and a random guy whose name I had already forgotten the second he told me.
Then suddenly she leaned forward, grabbed a bottle, got up, and handed it to me. She lingered for a moment, smiled at me and sat down again. Even though I only said a single word – thanks – it felt as if I had never had a more profound conversation. Maybe this time I wasn’t there to help, but to be helped. Or maybe that was the reason all along.