| I live south of Boston and fly out of Logan International Airport there, but since traffic is usually a nightmare, I take the Logan Express bus out of Braintree, about 15 miles south of the city. It was on a recent ride that a little kid made me realize what windows were for. He seemed about eight, wearing a bright green t-shirt, traveling with a young woman who appeared to be his mom. They sat in the row ahead of mine. We left Braintree and he knelt to peer out to the window. He stayed there for the duration of our ride. He wasn’t noisy or bouncy or doing anything unusual. He was just a kid looking out a window like many windows I’ve looked out on this ride many times before. I figured he saw what I usually saw: Nothing. Then I started watching like he was. Without a mind clogged with important things to think about. Without fretting about flight delays or crowded security lines. Without adult filters. I realized he wasn’t looking at nothing. He was looking at everything. The bus detoured temporarily off the highway to avoid traffic, cutting through local streets. A baby was pushed in carriage by a young woman chatting on her cellphone, talking to whomever our imagination fancied. People filled the patio of a restaurant this sunny late afternoon, some engaged face to face, laughing and smiling, leaving us to wonder what they were talking about. Others stared somberly into glowing phones in their hands, face to screen, emotionless fingers flying, leaving us to wonder the same thing. The bus lumbered back onto the Southeast Expressway, past the rolling green hills dotted by strolling duffers at Presidents Golf Course in Quincy. The boy stared. I wondered if he was thinking about his dad, about having played with his dad, or wanting to play with his dad. Maybe wishing he had a dad. Cars moved slowly by us, their stressed occupants looking out their own windows, mindsets presumably not as innocent as the boy watching them. We rolled past a big open park off the expressway, the name of which I’ve never known, the activity there I’d scarcely noticed. The boy did. As did I, pretty much for the first time. People walked. Dogs ran. Kites flew. Boats dotted the waters around Boston, near the Neponset River and Squantum Channel, the harbor islands visible beyond, his gaze drawn to them. Maybe he wondered what they held. Maybe he fantasized he was captain of a fort protecting the city from the British. It brought me back to the times I had such heroic thoughts. His gaze was drawn to the flashing lights of an ambulance, perhaps thinking as I was, about the undoubtedly sad reason for its howling rush toward a Boston hospital. It forced traffic aside, sped out of view, the boy’s eyes now drawn down, maybe trying to identify out-of-state plates, maybe counting highway stripes or gauging the time it took for them to stretch or blur by as the bus slowed and quickened. In those cars were the occasional other little kids looking out. Maybe this boy in front of me realized how lucky he was going to the airport, to be flying away. But he wasn’t smiling much. Maybe the reason for his plane ride wasn’t a happy one. It all kept him amazingly quiet, his mom having no need to drag him from the window to be still. Smiling, she pointed out familiar landmarks, identifying buildings in the cluster of the Boston skyline that reflected the waning sun’s rays off all that glass. Closer to Boston, a commuter train chugged toward South Station. The boy watched its slow slog, peering into all those windows through his. Near the airport, his head tilted to see planes taking off and landing, eyes wide, nose pressed to the glass, likely harboring no thoughts of traffic or flight delays or security lines, only the magic of metal gleaming in the blue sky. We pulled into Logan’s terminal A, where I got off. I walked by the mom and boy. He still looked out the window at airport life, of which we were now a part. “You both have a fun trip, wherever you’re going,” I said to her. “I loved watching him just watching out the window.” She smiled and thanked me. And I left the bus realizing how often I’ve looked out countless windows, seeing nothing because I used just my eyes. Children intuitively know how to see, not look. Like this little kid who watched me as the bus rolled away. May he never lose that gift. May we all find it again. |