… lesson of the last compartment
Every month a boy’s parents took a trip with him to see his Grandma and came home on the same train the next day. One day the boy said to his parents: “I’m grown up. Can I go to Grandma’s alone?”
After a brief discussion, his parents accepted. They stood at the station waiting for the train to exit. They said goodbye to their son and gave him some advice through the window. The boy replied, “I know. I’ve been told this a thousand times.”
As the train was about to leave, his father murmured in his ear: “Son if you feel frightened or insecure, this is for you!” And he put something in the boy’s pocket. Sitting in the train, the boy was without his parents for the first time.
He was admiring the landscape out the window. When a gang of rowdies got onto the train. They made a lot of noise running up and down the compartment. They bullied and heckled the passengers. One of them eyed the boy evilly.
The boy started feeling cornered and alone. About to cry, he remembered that his father had put something in his pocket. Trembling, he searched for it. It was a sheet of paper on which his father had written: “Son, I’m in the last train compartment!”
That’s how life is. Parents let their kids go. But they always like to be in the last compartment, watching, in case their children find obstacles and don’t know what to do. Parents are not clinging. They just want to be there for their children.