Takeaway

I’m in the drive through. There’s a double cue so that cars have to weave in politely to get to the pay window after making an order.

Just back from the beach, the wet dog smell in the car is a bit overpowering.

I don’t know why I have chosen to get a burger and chips. Every time I resolve to lose weight and be more health conscious, it seems to take the smallest trigger to push me off track. Today, it was boredom and tiredness.

Waiting to order, I accuse myself over and over for my weak will, lack of discipline. The thought spirals and takes me through the litany of life scenarios that could have been avoided had I been more in control of my passions.

From food and relationships, to managing money and career, I present myself with the long list of how I have failed.

I am old now, too old to be subservient to the same failings of my youth, and yet they are there like indelible marker. You would think you would learn something in fifty odd years on the planet, but it seems for me, maybe not.

I would turn around and go home to lettuce and a boiled egg if it weren’t for the cue.

It feels like a metaphor for the “no way out” of my life – restricted, dull, underachieved, over the hill, and not much to look forward to. And I know that facing that meal at home, alone, with just the pitter patter of the dog’s nails on hardwood floors, would seem virtuous in my little moral playbook.

That tiny deprivation should make me feel empowered, but it never does for long. I slip back into dissatisfied stasis after a day or two of health management – always too quick to celebrate my success with a few glasses of wine, after a week of good behaviour.

I can see depression at the corner of my eye and blink him away. He came to me once unexpectedly, a dark visitor that overstayed. Banking on my unwitting hospitality, depression took over my house and my life for almost a year.

He was such a greedy visitor. Stealing my joy, my friendships, my passions and when I finally evicted him, I swore no matter what, if ever I saw him again, I would walk away. It was how I got rid of him the first time, I walked, and walked, and walked away from him. And one day I came home, and he was gone.

The sound of an over-revved engine next to me and a pert squeak of the brakes, jolts my mind and lifts my gaze, and I see a young man struggling sheepishly with his bombed-out car.

Our eyes meet and I give him a little smile, acknowledging his embarrassment.

He smiles back and we both have a tiny giggle, a little moment of shared humanity.

He winds down his window. All of twenty something, with a head of brown shaggy curls and those tribal piercings that enlarge your earlobes, he mouths “you have a lovely smile,” before driving on to the window ahead of me.

I blush at the unexpected compliment and wonder at his confidence – that aura of just being all right in the world.

Returning to my thoughts, I order – small fries, a grilled chicken burger and Coke Zero – kidding myself that it represents some kind of restraint on my part.

I pull up to the window and wait.

The teenage girl repeats my order and as I rummage for my card, she closes the window, briefly before opening it again and smiling sweetly.

“The gentlemen before you paid for your meal,” she beamed.

I looked ahead to see the beat-up car take off, a noisy messenger of kindness.