“Your chair is still here, o.”
Coming out of the gate, it was mama Tayo's voice that I heard. For some few days now, I've not seen her, but there it wss beside her mini mart shop: the wooden chair I always sit on whenever I'm trying to wait for a site meeting.
As an architect, I am now so used to moving. From one project to another and just a single project could take me some couple of weeks, months, then another project development will take me to another place. Just inside my student back bag, I could put my laptop into it with my sketchbook, measuring tapes and everything that I need and start again.
That project I did had been one of those places that I expected to forget. But what I least expect was the place to remember me.
Mama Tayo still pointing at the chair she was telling me about with a smile on her face like she always does. "You people are not frequent here like before. You just came for some weeks and disappeared. I even thought you won't be coming here again."
"It is nor like that, I have work going on a nearby site," I replied to her.
"You don't have a stable site I guess," everywhere is a site for you isn't it," she said while handling me a chilled bottled water. "Sit down on the chair as you drink."
I dropped what I was holding while I sat.
One of the building that some people were building opposite her mini mart has been completed and painted but no occupant yet. New faces around her shop and it kinda looks different from just within few weeks that I left for another site. The volcanizer next to her shop has also gotten a new machine for his work.
Mama Tayo had not moved and no much difference in her shop. The same brown cooler that she has been using and kept near her entrance is still there. She already knew the type of drinks each customers wanted either cold or room temperature, she also knew those who would pick something from her and promise to pay her later on....
We talked about the project that going on beside her shop. She asked who owns it which I kept anonymous. She asked different questions, some I answered in details while some I didn't. Then she asked the question that I didn't expect that time.
“So where do you stay now?”
I replied her by telling her the area but not the exact place.
“And after this one?”
“I don’t know yet.”
Some smiled as usual as if I gave the best answer.
While I left her place that day. I kept thinking about the wooden chair.
Then the thought of a rolling stone came again to my mind. It has no dust setting on it. It has zero obligation to remain, no need to explain to anyone why it was leaving. And earlier before then, I have always imagined that staying on a point for a long time means missing something that is waiting somewhere else..
But when I sat on that plastic chair, I discovered something I quite haven't noticed before. I saw some changes in that area during my time away to another site, but I realised that I was the one who missed those changes.
The following week, I was passing the again to a nearby site, not to check the earlier site. To a new site fir inspection. I stopped at Mama Tayo's mini mart. My wooden chair still remain where it was. But this time, before she told me to sit down, I already sat.
Thank you for reading.
Images created by Gemini AI
