changing seasons

Another overcast day. Snapped this on my lunchtime walk in Alexandra Park. The most significant thing to happen today was this:

Ten to eight on the number 2 bus. It's busy, so I sit at the front. My phone thrums in my pocket. There is a message from my daughter

I'm on the bus

I wonder why she has texted me that. She left from her mother's house so I don't know where she is. Then it clicks: she's on this bus ! I look around and there she is on a back seat keeking out at me. I smile and head up to sit beside her.

For she is a working girl now and is on the way to the office. This morning was the first time both my daughter and I shared a bus to our respective work. We had a chat about dinner (she's at mine tonight) and about how work was going. We talk about how she's finding her working life. The beginnings of a working life. A wee blessing of intimate conversation snatched from the morning rush hour.

And then I was changing buses and off she went to her work. I don't even think I've quite adapted to this new cycle of our lives yet. My daughter a worker. A 9 to 5. An adult heading into what life is going to hold for her. It doesn't seem so long ago that I was taking her to play parks like the one in the photo.

Today with her suddenly travelling to work on the same bus as I, there was a slow dawning of this new world.