Farewell at a Red Light

Yesterday I pulled to a stop at a traffic light, and was waiting for it to flicker from red to green, when I happened to look across the street, and noticed the opposing vehicles.

Suddenly, a fella in one of the two cars closest to my vehicle swung open his door and exited his automobile. (Something you don’t see every day). For lack of a better moniker, “Jim” ran to the car behind his own, and out jumped the woman who only a few seconds before had been seated safely behind the steering wheel. And then, right in front of God and everybody, “Jim” and “Jill” embraced, and stole a momentary kiss.

And then it was over, and both drivers returned to their separate vehicles.

“Well now,” I mused. “What in the world?”

I have no earthly idea, (and I expect I will never know) what was going on during those fleeting seconds in time. However, I was privileged to be given a momentary entre into an interaction between two people who obviously knew, and loved one another.

Of course, I conjured up several scenarios which I endowed with approximately the same likelihood of being true.

A brother and sister who having just enjoyed their last dinner together at a local restaurant, and subsequently, one heading out across the world to fight one of our nation’s wars, and one merely driving back to her local residence. Finding themselves back to back at a red light, they took the final opportunity to bid “farewell.”

An amicably divorced husband and wife, now driving separate vehicles, and though having just finalized the dissolution of their marriage, maintained a lingering love and respect for one another.

A fiancé and fiancée on their way to their own wedding ceremony, when finding themselves momentarily stuck in traffic, and with their emotions bubbling over, could not resist expressing the mutual joy they were experiencing on this most special of all days.

Just some random possibilities.

And while I cannot begin to guess what was occurring during those few fleeting seconds in time, I will never forget the seemingly innocuous human interaction I witnessed that day, and I have little doubt that man and that woman will cherish their mutual, momentary memory; sacred to themselves, as long as they possess the wherewithal to remember.

By William McDonald, PhD. Excerpt from "(Mc)Donald's Daily Diary" Vol. 5