the best train ride ever

After Mike went to work today, I took the bus into the city, in order to get myself 'home' to Lewisham. It was a sunny wide-open day and I was enjoying watching the people smiling at one another and doing their thing, enjoying being calm in the Central Business District, so I stayed on the bus to Circular Quay, where the opera house is and a great view of the Harbour Bridge. I walked down through the Botanical Gardens and lay under a fig tree for a while, watching a small thrush flit about in the branches above me. Then I walked back to the station and took the Inner West train. A mother with two little children got on, all with the same auburn curly hair, and sat across from me. A couple got on too, with two Downs Syndrome kids, and sat down the way. It wasn't long before Louie (the little curly-haired boy of about 2) was inciting laughs in all of us, jumping up and down and waving goodbye to the tunnel, hello to the daylight and buildings and trees, and laughing hysterically whenever anyone would catch his eye. The Downs Syndrome girls were also practiced laughers; pretty soon the rest of us (me and two old men) were smiling too. The noon sun sectioned off the floor and laid gold on our necks, and it was hard to keep a laugh inside our throats.