Journeys and Reflections

From time to time, we will include short fiction and creative non-fiction that relate to light rail travel and public transportation in general. The following piece was submitted by one of our contributors.


"With My Father."

Waiting for a train, I talk to my father about trains. After my father’s parents divorced, my father used to take a street car in to the Loop, the East line from LaGrange. His father would take a street car down from Evanston, where he lived at the Y. They’d meet at a nut shop – imagine, my father says, a whole shop selling cashews, peanuts, almonds, warm in brown bags – and then take the street car back up to Evanston. He used to ride on the left side, looking for the blue “W” flag at Wrigley. A win. Only once did his father not show up.

“What did he say about why he didn’t show up?” I ask. My own kids are in school right now. It’s my week with them. In the back of my mind is a nibble of anxiety that I’m 30 miles away from them.
“All my mother said was, your god damn blankety blank father,” he says. “Maybe something happened. Maybe he got drunk and lost track of time.”
“He never mentioned it?”
“He never said anything about it.”

I think about my father alone, in downtown Chicago, waiting and alone. He would have been about the age my youngest daughter is now.
We have this conversation waiting for a train, and what we don’t talk about is my own pending divorce, my own children who will be waiting for me to pick them up after school. There is so much to cherish in this world. There are so many ways we find to hurt each other.

In thirty seconds, the announcer says, our train will pull in.