Dion.

The first time I went to the corner store next to my dorm, I bought a gallon of milk and a loaf of farmhouse bread. The total cost was $8 and some change. Before I bought them, I had stood in the aisles for a very long time. I kept converting dollars to shillings paralyzing myself in the process. Nine hundred shillings for bread and milk. I almost had a headache.

I was new and was in the 14 day isolation period with movement allowed only when completely necessary. I lived in a dormitory with a common kitchen and I didn't feel at home cooking around people I didn't know so my only affordable option was milk and bread.

At the store, there was a long queue behind me when I went to pay. I could feel people staring at me eagerly waiting for their turn. I gave the cashier a $10 bill and she asked me for five cents. I put my hands in my pockets, pulled all the coins I had and started inspecting each of them. I didn't know which one was a 5 cent coin. I knew a quarter. I had watched enough movies with references to it, but the rest were just small circles. I kept looking at the coins in my hand, at her and back at the people behind me and I couldn't figure it out. I didn't want to ask the people behind me because I knew there was a high probability they were my classmates and I didn't want to start my year in university as the girl who couldn't tell the difference between a penny and five cents so I refrained from asking them. With no solution in mind and the self inflicted pressure from behind to wrap up my purchase, I just stretched out my hand and showed her everything I had and asked quietly: "Could you please help me? Which one is it?"

She looked at my palm and picked a grey coin. She showed it to me and said, "here." She didn't look at me awkwardly or pause.

Her name, which I learned very late on, was Dion. She was Asian. I had never had a real relationship with an Asian person before. What I knew of Asian people I had learned through movies and books. I had a framework of who they were but Dion deconstructed it in seconds.

I had expected people to see me differently because I was now aware of the differences between me and others. She didn't. She saw me as a person who was standing in front of her, confused, holding out her palm, needing help. I think she had also clocked me in the aisles looking lost and confused so she understood. Her simple "Here" was the beginning of a friendship that wasn't and was at the same time.

Dion made an impression on me and made me feel safe so I always went back to that store. The first few weeks I noted when her shifts started and ended and would only go to the store then just in case I was confused about something else and I needed a friendly person to help me out. She helped me with the coins and the money, told me what to buy and sometimes gave me a snack or a drink for free, without making anything of it. There was no ceremony to her kindness. It was just there.

I was an international student who was chronically homesick and sometimes extremely low. I was drowning with work and assignments. The currency, food, distances between people and the temperature of ordinary interactions made me feel so alone and lonely. I was learning all of it at once and some days I went into that store depleted in ways I couldn't explain and I think she could tell. She had a soothing quality about her that I couldn't name. The only time I had experienced it was from my own mum but I was far away from my mum and this lady looked at me and decided quietly to be gentle.

We never exchanged names for a long time. She just knew I was a student and I knew she was the woman at the register at the corner store and that was enough to build something on, apparently.

When I got pregnant she was still there. When I gave birth she bought me a bib, some onesies and a toy. After one of my disappearing acts, she gave me her number when she saw me next. In between us texting and me ghosting she would invite me to meet her after her shift to sit somewhere and talk. Sometimes I went and sometimes I made excuses. Sometimes the workload was just too much, other times I was just afraid, or shy, or other things in between.

At some point I pulled a classic Houdini and even changed my number not because anything was wrong but because there was so much going on and I didn't know how to explain.

When I went back to the store she talked to me like nothing had happened. Like I was never gone and we picked it up right where we left it.

I think about that a lot, the grace of someone who doesn't punish you for disappearing. Who doesn't make you pay for the silence with more silence.

After I graduated I lost touch with her. The move, the adjustment, everything that came after. I lost the thread but I still have her number. I have had it for three years and I have not called. My husband thinks this is very toxic behavior, and I agree with him. However, I also know it's something else. Me not calling her has nothing to do with not caring but rather being unable to carry the care into a phone conversation. The call would have to hold all of it, the coins, the snacks, the bib, the disappearing, the years of silence and me missing her and I don't know if I can hold all of that and speak at the same time.

There are relationships that feel small enough to lose but large enough to grieve. Dion is that for me and I have learned something about myself through her absence that I am not entirely proud of. The more someone means to me, the harder it is to reach out. I protect the feeling by not risking it. I keep the gratitude inside where it is safe and whole and no one can say anything that might complicate it.

I miss her and I say nothing and I am ashamed that I am someone who can write an entire essay about a woman and still not be ready to dial her number. It's my loss.