A little bit of love

The bus arrived in style, splashing the sidewalk and my shoes with quite a bit more water than necessary. I hastily got inside, eager to get out of the rain. The windows were mostly layered with thick fog but you could still see the drops outside falling like a veil. I grabbed hold of a pole as the buss moved and looked around. Most of the seats were taken save a few in the back that I didn’t feel like going to so I just stood there, watching. I was across from a little girl who looked no older that seven. She had a pair of thin blond braids and was holding a ladylike handbag with a sparkling picture of the Disney princesses that clashed adorably with her camouflage-print pants. She smiled at a woman with the same kind of blond hair tied into one plaid at the back. I guessed this must be her mother, although she looked rather young. A grin split across my own lips as I saw the kid was missing a front tooth, somehow a little gap can always make a child’s smile sparkle. The girl stood on tipi-toe and started, clumsily writing something on the fogged up glass. As each misshapen letter appeared I saw the woman’s eyes twinkle with a kind of silent happiness. Soon the scribbles, slanting a bit to the side and cramped all the way up to the edge of the window, spelled some thing like “ILOVE YOUMO M”. The young woman standing next to her bent down and mumbled something in the girl’s ear, then kissed her on the nose. As the bus approached my stop both mother and daughter burst into giggles and started drawing on a clear patch of window. I got off grinning to myself like an idiot. The rain had almost stopped and was now only a faint drizzle.