Twenty years ago, I drove a taxi for a living. One early morning, I went to pick up a passenger at 2:30 a. m. When I arrived to collect my passenger, I saw a small woman in her eighties standing before me. I took her suitcase to the car and then returned to help the woman. She took my arm and we walked slowly towards the car.
She kept thanking me for my kindness. "It's nothing," I told her. "I just try to treat my passengers the way l would want my mother treated."
"Oh, you're such a good man," she said. When we got into the taxi, she gave me an address, and then asked, "Could you drive me throughout the downtown (市中心)?"
"It's not the shortest way," I answered quickly.
"Oh, I'm in no hurry," she said. "I'm on my way to hospice (末期病人安养所). I don't have any family left. The doctor says I don't have very long time." I quietly shut off the meter (计价器). For the next two hours, we drove through the city. She showed me the building where she had once worked, and the neighborhood where she had lived. Sometimes she asked me to slow down in front of a special building and she would sit staring into the darkness, saying nothing.
As the day broke, she suddenly said. "I'm tired. Let's go now."
We drove in silence to the address she had given me.
"How much shall I give you?" she asked.
"Nothing," I answered.
"You have to make a living," she said.
"Oh, there are other passengers," I said.
Almost without thinking, I bent down and gave her a hug. She held onto me tightly and said, "You gave an old woman a little moment of happiness."
