He sat on the opposite aisle, one row in front of me. The
bald patch on his head had the same shape and shine as a ceramic plate fresh
out of the dishwasher. Around circled patches of hair that seemed to have grown
grey from the scalp, rather than whitened with age. As if he were a boy born
with the wisdom of a man. And, though he can’t have been born with the earring
(a silver disk in the lobe of his left ear), he wore it like it was second
nature. A personality trait, not an accessory.
***
The earring didn’t look like it had been his mother’s
idea. Perhaps it was a secret kept from her, a tired and wrinkled woman waiting
for her son to come home, olive eyes a magnet to the kitchen window. She’d been
baking all afternoon – warm wafts of bread lined the cracks in the walls and holes
in the ceiling.
“What took you so long?” She asked with open arms. He
came closer - her rosy cheeks paled as his white ears crimsoned. “What do you
call that?” The silver disk was as much of a staple as her son’s smile: both
gleamed with mischief.
“A fashion statement,” he said.
Burnt bread has a very distinctive smell.
***
Perhaps it had been peer pressure - the cigarettes and
vodka shots of forty years ago. In a group of three friends, one always feels
like they have to prove themselves.
“Not afraid of a needle are you?”
“I’ll do it if you do it first.”
“We’ll be like the Three Musketeers.”
Teenage boys are all talk. Their words inflated like
balloons, popped by the mere stab of a needle. Two friends unsure what to do
with themselves. The third still didn’t belong.
“We didn’t think you’d actually agree to it.”
***
Perhaps he was trying to bond with his daughter,
searching for his feminine side to disguise his disappointment in his
first-born not being a son.
“Daddy, will you get one too?”
“I don’t think Daddy would suit an earring very well,
darling.”
Little girls always get what they want. Twenty minutes
later, daddy and daughter walked out with three piercings, her two silver stars
centred, his slightly lower, somewhat crooked. He had an odd earlobe, he’d
learnt.
***
There we both sat, hungry yet bloated from travelling,
coffee-breathed but craving more caffeine. Not just a row but an entire
lifetime apart. Passengers of the same low budget airline whose paths happened to
coincide. His earring twinkled under the plane’s artificial lights. His smile,
directed at his daughter, did too.
