the traveller

I am walking among the crowds of travellers, rushing from door to door to catch their trains. I'm not in that kind of hurry yet. I walk between the men waiting for their girls in the ladies' room, past the bustling businesses selling food or amusement to the weary ones passing through. Although standing conspicuously in the center of the station wearing a bright cape and warm smile, I am invisible. "Take care of yourself, kid," is what the streams of faces say, if they see me at all. I have entered the world of somebody-else's-problem. Walking alone down the busy corridors and crowded waiting areas of Pennsylvania Station alone, I feel strangely a part of something. I keep my eyes open, looking for a familiar face among the thousands, but the only familiar face I find is that of the traveler. Some are hard and set, used to the confusion and mayhem of their commute. One woman, wearing a red jacket and dark blue slacks ran her hands nervously over her tightly pulled ponytail, murmuring to herself "Four-thirty-three… four-thirty-three…." I flash her a smile as I walk past, continuing on my semi-pointless wandering, and as her nervous eyes looked to my face for a moment a tiny smile formed at the edges of her brown-red lips. Then she looked back at her watch.

If someone had stopped to ask me where I was going, I imagine I would sound confident and sure of where my destination lies, even though it may not be true. Sure, I know where I belong this trip, the 4:49 LIRR train to Huntington, change in Huntington for the Port Jeff. line, change in Jamaica for all other stations.

On the train, I pass through microcosms of all kinds of life; the red brick apartment buildings with green and blue shutters give way to stores and more trains. I always spend my train rides watching everything around me. The little girl up by the doors can't be more than six years old, and the man she's standing with appears to be her father. My assumptions are confirmed when she scratches her nose and looks up to his bespectacled face saying, "Daddy, look at all the other trains!" and turning to stare back out the window. She still stares, eyes wide, as we pull out of Jamaica station, and her dad ruffles her long blonde hair. "We'll be home soon, and you can tell Mommy all about what you saw today in Daddy's office." The little girl is glowing with the day's excitement, but when her father sits back down next to her, she drifts off to sleep in is black-jacketed arms. I remember my own first ecstatic train rides with my dad and younger brother, looking eagerly out the windows as close to the front of the train as possible. "Is that the city, Dad? Is that it?"

The train rushes bumpily by the tree-lined roadways. The apartments have disappeared and now light blue and yellow houses and baseball fields peek through the trees. The girl sitting next to me turns to me for a brief discussion of music, saying her friends either blast Bon Jovi or Madonna constantly, and I nod, mine have similar tastes. My friendly seatmate gets off at Mineola, the next stop. As her bustling warm family left, l the only noise around is a woman in a black kerchief on a cell-phone and the distant conversations from the other end of the car. I look out the window, the temporary distraction of conversation gone, and watch the passing dirt-filled construction sites, the people walking down the street in couples, families, and alone, and Westbury going by in the blink of my train-sped eye. The woman with the black kerchief and cell-phone has traded its company for that of a book; the little girl is still asleep in her father's arms. The rush from New York City has worn off and the train quiets to a gently rumbling peace as we approach Hicksville.

I doze, drifting through scenes out the window. "Next stop Huntington. Next and last stop. Change at Huntington for the train to Port Jeff. It'll be the next train on this track." People gather their bags to the shouting of the loudspeaker, and the entire train moves toward the doors as we slow to a stop in Huntington. The woman with the black kerchief is a few steps behind me, and I turn to watch her and see who else stayed on for the long haul to Huntington. As I step off the train, the garbage can begs me to "Make a Deposit," and I leave it with my leaky Snapple bottle as I'm left to walk through the travellers again. As I walk down the platform, I blend back into invisibility among people trying to just get where they're going with as few obstacles as possible and walk back to the regular world.