I was on the 16 bus coming in from the airport on a wet Thursday evening, the kind of Dublin rain that does not fall so much as hang in the air and find its way under your collar. I had finished a late shift near Swords and was thinking only of getting home, heating soup, and saying nothing to anyone. The bus was warm and steamed-up, full of suitcases, headphones, damp coats, and people trying to be alone together.
At O’Connell Street, a woman in her sixties stood up too quickly, then sat down again. She had a folded map in one hand and a phone in the other, dead as a stone. I noticed because she looked the way my mother looks in hospitals: polite, frightened, and determined not to be a burden. She leaned towards a young lad beside her and asked if this was the stop for “Rathmines Road, near the church.” He shrugged, not unkindly, and said he wasn’t sure. The bus moved on.
I could have stayed quiet. That is the truth of it. I had a headache, my shoes were soaked, and I had my own little griefs waiting at home. But something in her voice caught me. She was trying to laugh at herself, saying she was “making a grand mess of Ireland already,” but her eyes were shining. I asked where she was staying. She showed me a printed booking for a small guesthouse off Leinster Road. She had flown in from Lyon to visit the place where her father had worked for one summer in the 1950s. He had died in January, and she had promised herself she would come.
By then we were past the stop she should have taken. She apologised to me as if it were my evening she had ruined. I told her we would sort it. I checked the route on my phone and saw we could get off near Camden Street, cross over, and catch another bus towards Rathmines. She asked if it was safe to wait alone. It was not a dramatic question, but it had weight. I thought of my own mother, who had once got lost in Heuston Station after her cataract surgery and rang me in tears from beside a vending machine. A stranger had stayed with her until I arrived. I had never met him, never thanked him. Maybe this was my chance to pass that kindness along.
We got off near Camden Street. The rain had sharpened, and the pavements were bright with taxi lights and pub windows. She told me her name was Claire, but in French it sounded softer, like it belonged to a song. I offered to call the guesthouse, but the number went to voicemail. She tried to be cheerful again and said she had wanted an adventure. Then she looked at the traffic and admitted, very quietly, that since her husband died she did not like being lost after dark.
We waited under the shelter with two students sharing chips and a man humming along to music only he could hear. When the bus came, I got on with her. She protested, saying I must have somewhere to be. I said I did, but it would still be there. That surprised me as much as it surprised her. I am not always generous with my time. I count minutes like coins. But sitting beside Claire as the bus rolled through Rathmines, listening to her tell me about her father sending postcards from Dublin with drawings of gulls on them, I felt my own hurry loosen.
We nearly missed the turn again because the windows were fogged and the driver called the stops too quickly for her to follow. I asked him, and he gave us a nod when we reached the right place.
Note: Please be aware that these are written in confidentiality and there is not reference or mention of any real people and their sentiments here. Every incident and Story tends to be emotional so please read at your own emotional risk. Website is not responsible for anything related. HumansofDublin.io is not related to the photography project HumansofDublin by Peter Varga
