Morning Commute

In a city of 8 million strangers, you would be shocked at how many of them I see on an almost daily basis during my commute to work, yet I never know their names, where they come from, or where they're going.

Almost every single day, I wait on the Clinton-Washington subway platform with a French family consisting of a slender, bearded father, a willowy mother with hair that is tangled in a beautiful french way, and two little girls with buckle shoes and pink backpacks. Their father carries their scooters, one pink and one purple, in one arm, and their violins are strapped across his back. They stay on the train when I get off at the Fulton stop.

Between the second and third flights of stairs that I climb during my first subway transfer to the 4/5 train, I walk past a woman standing by a railing shouting at the top of her Caribean accented voice about Jesus, his coming, and what's going to happen to all of us when He comes. It is not good. She hands out peices of paper, and I take one on occassion, just to be polite.

After I get off the train at the 59th street station, I walk out onto the street across from an Ethan Allen store where there is a large, often soiled homeless man usually asleep on the grate in front of the store. So much is seperated in the glass pane of that store front window. Inside is expensive furniture, lush carpets, and ornate table settings, and outside is a man without a home. He pretends that he doesn't see anyone, and everyone pretends that they don't see him. I pretend I don't see him. But I do. I feel bad about this every single morning.

My walk from the 59th street subway station to the hospital is 3 blocks crosstown and 8 blocks uptown. My route depends on a number of variables. On sunny days, I follow the sunny side of the street. On rainy days, I follow construction scaffolding. On hurried days, I follow green lights. If there is a handsome man in front of me, I follow him. Which ever route I take, I pass by my handful of routine smells, stores, and strangers.

I walk past a breakfast cart that smells like bacon grease and burnt coffee, and it reminds me bacon grease and burnt coffee at the Burr Oak Lodge on Enemy Swim Lake in South Dakota. The two places could not be more different, but that smell is the exact same. I walk through a group of Bloomingdales dock loaders with coffees and bagels in hard, and I can hear them whisper under their breath on days when I wear skirts.

I pass the Hot and Crusty Bakerdeli (yes, that's actually what it's called), and I see a man who looks like Prince Charles. Total doppleganger. I see him almost every day, and I think he recognizes me too. Somedays he carries an umbrella, and he carries it with total disregard for the people walking around him. That's such a Prince Charles thing to do.

I get to the crosswalk by the hospital where I work, and I wait for the light to turn green with a girl who has an anchor tattoo on her right ankle. I see her and her nautical tat several times a week and am always so perplexed how our timing is so precise that we wait for the exact time light to change. I wonder if she notices my tattoo on my foot. I think that she does. The light turns green, and we cross.

Every day I pass characters, my characters, and even though we'll never meet to share coffee or to share our stories, it's enough to see our strange lives cross paths during our morning commute.