Waiting

Each time I have to wait for a train to pass, I watch the windows of the compartments for my father’s face. I imagine that traveling by passenger train must be romantically pleasant—rich upholstered seats and walls (always in deep red), people dressed well in an “old world” sort of way, men reading newspapers, women flipping through literary magazines.

Most often, the trains look old and run down, graffitied and dirty. The passengers inside look even more run down—tired, weary from the day, the week, the month, the endless years of riding those trains and waiting. Waiting to get to where they’re going. In the morning, waiting to get to work, where they wait for the day’s end to wait for the trains to carry them home again. The expressionless faces at the windows expressing unconscious dreams that the interminable waiting were over, and yet not knowing what they would wait for if they believed they had a choice.

I wait too. Wait for the train to pass and the gates to rise so that I can continue on, and wait for something else. Each time I have to wait for a train to pass, I watch the windows of the compartments for my father’s face. My father has been dead for years now, and he never rode trains, but I never stop expecting that I’ll see him there, riding and waiting.