Adopting Family

There is a moment in every holiday where you realise that it is time to move on to the next destination. Most of the time this fills you with all the excitement of travelling to a new city and you get the kind of butterflies that stop you from sleeping so that you can spend the night day dreaming instead. But every now and again, you’ll leave a city with a little bit of sadness in your heart.

This was what happened to me as I was leaving Paris.

It’s not that I wasn’t excited to go to my next destination. My next destination was Antibes, on the French Riviera and anyone who isn’t excited about that is just plain stupid. But I was a little bit sad to be leaving Paris too. Yes, Paris is gorgeous and I loved my time there but what I was really worried about missing was the family that I had adopted along the way (See Arriving In Paris).

So as I sat at Gare de Lyon, waiting for my train, I sat thinking of them and was in a bit of a daze when I noticed someone waving at me. It turns out I had been staring at them for quite a while and their discomfort had now turned to curiosity and they had waved just to see if I was actually conscious.

I quickly snapped back to the real world and waved back. The poor guy smiled and then turned back to his conversation. I watched a little while longer and noticed that all three men were signing one another and their conversation consisted entirely of hand signals. It was a wonder to watch and before long I was awkwardly starring again.

The man who had previously waved at me noticed me again and I blushed a deep red before turning away.

I know that people with various disabilities are often judged and I hated the thought of them thinking I was starring in judgement. I felt very ashamed and got a huge fright when I finally looked back up and found the guy standing directly in front of me.

He mouthed “bonjour” and I did the same with a wave. He then mouthed the French equivalent of “how are you” and I replied and added a ‘thumbs up’. I was grinning from ear to ear and I noticed that he was too. He gave a small wave before turning around and walking away with his two friends.

I have no idea what the conversation meant to him nor why he came up to me in the first place but I can positively say that this tiny little interaction had made my day. I spent my entire 6 hour train ride thinking about it and every time I did, I smiled.

I had made a new friend just as I was leaving Paris and I couldn’t for the life of me think of why this interaction had had such a profound effect on me. Obviously I was relieved that the group knew I was not judging them. And it is always nice to see a smile. But I couldn’t shake the interaction and continued to think about it long after I had got off the train.

That evening as I got into bed, in another strange city, surrounded by more people that I didn’t know, I realised what it was about this guy that had left me grinning. It was the kindness and the happiness that bridged the barriers of communication and language and brought human interaction down to its most basic form, a greeting and a smile. And in that instant I realised there was nothing to fear about staying in a hostel in a city I had barely ever heard of because at the base of it, we were all people hoping to adopt one another as family for the duration of our stay.