The man in the orange shirt

People buzzed past me on either side, speaking in languages that I couldn’t understand or identify. I was in a train station in Denmark. It was a beautiful day, sun cast down and warmed the city. I walked through a park next to the train station, wrote in my journal and ate a granola bar from my diminishing stash. My train was scheduled to depart in an hour and I sat on a bench alone watching the families stroll past me.

While my mind wandered and I suppressed the ever-lurking stress in the back of my mind, I tried to plan where I could sleep for the next few days. I was alone in Europe, with nothing more than a ten pound backpack and a tracking phone with only a few minutes left on it. A man was suddenly sitting next to me on the bench, interrupting my thoughts and peering into my face.

“Hello,” he spoke to me in a thick accent. He had dark skin and dark hair, he looked to be maybe Indian. He wore an orange shirt I remember. I couldn’t identify his accent. Before I knew it, he was talking and talking, his eyes searched the crowd around me. He started asking me questions about our government, about where I was from. He pried and pushed, even yelled with excitement as he spoke about President Bush and his disagreement with our government. I hardly listened to him, I was so distracted by his sudden approach. Paranoia took hold, I remember how people had warned me of getting robbed and how careful I should be traveling alone. My money and passport were secure under my shirt. I pulled my backpack closer, wrapped my legs around it and held the strap with both hands. He spoke on. I wondered if he was distracting me and he had friends that were watching in the crowd and waiting to pounce upon me. Beads of nervous sweat formed on my forehead. Finally, when I began to wonder if he would ever leave me alone, a tall white man sat next to me and opened a newspaper. The man in the orange shirt glanced at him. “Oh is this your father?” he asked. Startled, I realized it was my out. I nodded and scooted a few inches closer to the man holding the newspaper.

After Orange Shirt had left, with a nonchalant wave, I breathed a sigh of relief and realized all my muscles were tense. Had the man been a threat? Was he just genuinely nice? Was my fear an overreaction? It made me wonder. Had society trained us to be wary and afraid of strangers, suspicious of even the honestly nice passerby? I look back and think that my interaction with Orange Shirt could have ended in a much worse manner, I was a hundred and ten pound, eighteen year old girl traveling through Europe alone after all. But it didn’t and I still wonder if he was just being nice to me or if he had ulterior motives.

Jaxson

The first time I met Jaxson, he was teetering on his chubby one year old legs atop the back of a leather couch. He was a friendly baby and gave me a grin and a gurgle as he wobbled to and fro on the narrow ledge. My first instinct was to dive for him, scoop him up and set him down on solid ground. But I was only sixteen and didn't know Jaxson, his family, or their routine, and evidently, Jaxson was allowed to climb onto the couch and risk life and limb for the sheer pleasure of it. "Oh he does that all the time." Said his mom Jen, when she noticed my concern. "He hasn't fallen yet so I just let him do it." Well it wasn't until I had been Jaxson's nanny for several months, that he actually took a tumble right off the back of the couch. I was in the kitchen, cleaning his lunch dishes and keeping an eye on him from across the counter. He grinned from ear to ear and wobbled on his fat little legs, it was clearly his favorite place to be. Suddenly, mid-teeter, his right heel slid over the edge and the smile melted from his face. His balance was lost, his expression registered realization and then fear. I knew I wouldn't be able to reach him in time and I froze in my place, breath held, arms extended. With a bump and a shriek, he hit the floor behind the couch. I leaped across the room and within a mere instant had him wrapped in my arms, shushing and kissing and rocking. He seemed to be uninjured, mostly just shocked and afraid, but it took me a whole hour to finally calm down and regulate my racing heart.

He was the love of my life. I dedicated almost every day to him. I would leave school and immediately drive to pick him up from daycare. We would go home and make dinner, play with his toys that recited the alphabet and mimicked animal sounds. I cut his hot dogs into tiny triangles, always petrified he would choke on to big of a bite. Every night I put him to bed and he fell asleep to country music on station 93.1, Kyss FM. I fell asleep shortly after he did, on the large leather couch that he loved to climb on. His mom was a bartender and would come home in the late hours of the night. She would wake me gently and I would tell her about the day that Jaxson and I had shared. I wanted him as my own. He was so sweet and calm. His thin blond hair and blue eyes melted my heart. I was so young but because of Jaxson, I developed cravings to have a child of my own. He and I would lay in a hammock in the front yard and watch the blue of the sky shift beyond the leaves of the trees. In the winter, I would bundle him up in so many layers he was nearly immobile. I loved him so much.

One day, after I had been Jaxson's nanny for a little more than nine months, his mom told me that she and Jaxson were moving to Costa Rica. Apparently, her family owned a vacation home in Costa Rica and she had decided on a whim to move there. I was shocked that she had so suddenly decided to move their lives across the nation, but I was more shocked that I would never see Jaxson again. Two months later, they were gone. I was unbelievably heartbroken, but also, in a way I was liberated. I was free to see my friends more often and didn't have to work every night. But I missed Jaxson terribly. I missed our routine and his laugh. I missed how he made me feel inside. The pain didn't last long. I felt like I'd had a puppy taken away from me. I loved him but I also began to realize, once he was gone, he had been such a burden in my life and had consumed nearly all of my time. I adjusted back to living a normal high school life and began to think about Jaxson less and less. Jaxson’s mom sent me one picture, it was of the two of them in a swimming pool, Jaxson was smiling his big goofy grin. He was tan and splashing. Years have passed, he must be about seven now. That’s crazy for me to think about. I wonder sometimes if he would remember me if I were to ever see him again. I'm glad he was such a large part of my life for a little while. I learned how to love and how to respect children and I learned an appreciation for the freedom I still have without a child of my own.