On the Train Ride Home

Canons Park commuters. The platform waiters on the outskirts of London. That is what we are. Always here, every weekday, at four-thirty in the afternoon. I’m here earlier than normal though. It’s currently four-fifteen… I shift my weight from one leg to the other and fiddle with my bag’s strap. The girl with her unnaturally dyed red hair is here now, standing a few metres away from me. She’s got earphones in and I wonder for a moment what she might be listening to. Minutes pass and we’re joined by the guy that always carries this vintage work briefcase and I’ve always wondered what he does that others refer to as a job. Oh, side note: I work here at the coffee shop, La Brioche, and am most recognisable by my round glasses and freckles. Briefcase guy is on his phone as I notice a few more familiar faces join the platform of waiters. As the scene plays besides and behind me, I start to hum the tune to a song by The Paper Kites. Waiting down at the station, I don’t remember, I think it was late then, standing always so quiet, we’re like elevators, filled up with strangers… Exactly. The irony. The train pulls up to the platform, like it does every day, and we group toward the doors. They open and we file through like running water.

I find a place to stand because the seats are all taken. Again. Not like I’ve been standing pretty much the whole day anyways. I move my bag to my other shoulder so I can lean against the pole I’m holding onto. I remember reading once that we should fall in love with the ordinary; fall in love with the everyday. Quite typical of me to remember this particular quote right this second. I pull a face, ever so slightly, at myself. It just so happens my mind enjoys reminding me of things at the most inconvenient of moments. Like right now, on the train heading home, standing and looking out at this sea of people. Sitting, standing, earphones in, eyes fixed on whatever it is they are looking at on their phones. Red-head has hers out now, her thumb is moving, so no doubt scrolling through some form of social media. It’s either that, or they are desperately trying to avoid eye contact with the person sitting across from them or anyone else within eye contact proximity. It’s almost entertaining to watch honestly, why anyone would prefer to look at their phones instead of watching this I don’t know. Anyways, how am I supposed to fall in love with that?

Dull. A weird sort of a pain nags at me watching this monotonous scene of my everyday life. I see most of these Canons Park commuters every day. I have no idea who any of them are… Naturally. What would I? It’s considered strange if you try talk to someone else on the way home. Unspoken rules. Gosh, I’m tired. They are tired. We are all tired. Well, what do you know, another quote comes to mind. Something about our souls being tried, not our bodies, how we don’t need more sleep, but rather more adventure, freedom, truth, and stillness. Something about waking up and living. How inspiringly unrealistic for most of us. Looking into the eyes of those who failed at avoiding my gaze for a second, I can agree that I am surrounded by tired souls. We’re like elevators, filled up with strangers. I shift my weight and thought a lot about stillness for a second. And I feel like it had to do with more than just quietness.

My thoughts were interrupted – if you didn’t already realise by now, I live a lot in my thoughts and through quotations and song lyrics – by a sight unseen by me before. Out the corner of my eye, to the left toward the end of our compartment, was a little old lady just sitting there, with her crochet hook and wine red coloured wool. She just sat there, crocheting like she was in her lounge at home. The sight was so unusual, and I had never seen her among the platform waiters. My guess is she felt my staring at her because she lifted her head and caught my eye and smiled. I returned the smile, admittedly taken aback by the gesture. We had just broke an unspoken rule. She looked me in the eye, like we were people, I mean we are people, but you know what I mean. Like it was completely ordinary to do so – to look someone in the eyes and smile. As she returned to her work, I watched as her fingers moved with the wool and hook like they knew exactly what to do on their own, and a thought came to me, again, if only my mind would just stop for a moment that’d be great. Anyways, side tracked, the thought was that it is actually normal, totally normal, to smile at someone, to look them in the eye. That connection makes us human, shows us we are human in the most simple way. I looked around the compartment again – we’ve lost connection. That’s what it is... In losing this connection, we have lost the ability to fall in love with the ordinary and the everyday.

And then it all abruptly ends. My train of thoughts are interrupted as we come to a halt and I’m brought back to the here and now with the jolt. Stanmore Station is announced and I’m drowning in this sea of bodies moving towards the door to get out. I go with the current. Of the Canons Park commuters, only briefcase guy gets off here with me. Once out the doors, we disperse and I feel like I can finally breathe again. The air is starting to get cooler and I glance at the trees looking forward to autumn. I move my bag onto my other shoulder as I take a deep breath of the fresh evening air. I start the walk home. Home. Finally, I can sit and have a cup of tea, maybe even get some of that stillness that quote was talking about. I push my glasses back up my nose and a wine red colour peeking out a handbag caught my attention. The old lady? She got off here too? But, I’ve never seen her before… I keep walking past her, until I hear her call out. Wait, what? I turn around and realise she’s talking to me…

“Excuse me, dear?”

“Yes?” I answered, a bit awkwardly. We’ve just broken another unspoken commuting rule.

She slowly caught up to where I was standing, and when she reached me, I asked her if she needed help with anything.

“No, no. I’m alright, thank you. I was just wondering if you knew what the word ‘sonder’ meant.”

“Um, I’m afraid not,” was the only logical way I could answer the question of this weird stranger. Why in the world was she asking me what an equally weird word meant?

She proceeded to tell me that it refers to the realisation that each passer-by has a life as vivid and complex as your own. To which I must pulled some kind face, because she smiled at me and said, “When I saw you looking at me on the train, and then you smiled back, that was the first word that came to my mind. I wanted to share it with you.”

“I also wanted to show you this,” she said as she pulled out her wine red crocheted piece. “It’s going to be a scarf. Do you know that all it takes is doing a certain type of knot over and over again? You use wool and a hook to make a bunch of knots that turn into something beautiful.” She ran her fingers over the piece as she added, “All these knots are connected to each other and have a purpose, because standing alone, they are just knots. Oh, and by the way no piece is perfect, I always end up making some kind of mistake somewhere. It reminds me of life…”

I stopped. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand. Why are you telling me all this?”

She smiled at me with the kind of smile that made me wish I had known my own grandmother and replied, “In life, all we can do is use what we have been given to create something beautiful, not perfect, because there will always be mistakes, the ones we make and the ones that just happen. We have people in our lives who help shape who we are, and then those we meet as we go along, but they all become knots in our piece, memories, and add to what we are creating. And that, my dear, is the beauty of it all, of the ordinary.”

The sun was starting to disappear and she stopped at a corner telling me that she goes this way from here. She took a step forward and patted my hand in that old person kind of way, and added, “That is falling in love with the ordinary… I noticed you looking around the train compartment with the tried sadness in your eyes at what you saw. That’s why I made a point of walking over to you tonight.”

I squeezed her hand and thanked her. She smiled with a nod and turned to carry on….

I had never seen that old lady before or since then, but I will never forget her and the words she spoke that evening on my way home. They have stayed with me, regardless of how slightly odd they and the events were. In all honesty, it left me feeling bewildered and I’m still trying to make sense of her crochet-life principle thing. But, we meet no ordinary people in our lives. C.S. Lewis said that once, and you know what, he was absolutely right. I think that is the point of the ordinary – to realise that actually there is no such thing, and when we realise this, we will fall in love with it. With the everyday.