The train home

This is not my first choice for a Saturday night.  First off, I’m shattered, despite having “the night off” as my husband put it.  He jokingly pondered over Facetime earlier, as I said good night to the kids, how he would spend his brownie points.  The ones he had earned for looking after the kids.  Our kids.  For one day.  

I am sitting on the train back from Middlesborough.  It’s 21:47, now 21:48, and I am on a jammed-packed train.  I know why I am on a train at nearing midnight on a Saturday, but why are all these other people?  Are they also the lucky recipient of a child hiatus or some similar reprieve? It’s a four and a half hour journey and almost everyone in this cabin has been on this train for the exact same amount of time as me.  There is a teen boy, hunched over the table, hood up, leaning his head on his hand.  I was sure he was asleep, partly because he is a teen boy and that’s all I remember my cousin doing at that age, and partly because he hasn’t moved for the best part of three hours.  Then I realize he is looking at his phone under the table.  Figures.

Next I notice a man sitting facing me a few rows away, whose gaze I keep meeting accidentally.  He’s at that awkward angle when, every time I look up, he is right in my line of sight.  It’s getting uncomfortable.  Fortunately he has glasses on that reflect the light so I can pretend our eyes didn’t just meet.  It’s now 21:54. 

F, my journey buddy, is dozing off as she watches whatever is left downloaded on her Netflix account.  Given how far we are into the journey and the sheer number of hours we have been trapped in these seats, I can only imagine she is left watching an episode of some show Netflix has taken it upon itself to recommend. “Because you watched” that dreadful teen comedy, you’re bound to enjoy our own-brand version.  No wonder she is falling asleep. 

I am listening to David Sedaris read his own book, Calypso.  Good thing he is funny.  Otherwise I would be rethinking my life choices after attending a baby shower that took twice as long to get to as it actually lasted.  Instead, I am grateful for the hours to myself, reduced legroom and threadbare seats withstanding.  I get to indulge in a few of my favourite things.  Were I dressed in clothes made from curtains, sitting on a bed surrounded by a herd of children and Julie Andrews asked me, I would answer without hesitation: audiobooks, podcasts and Trader Joe’s “real cheese” own-brand Cheetos. Perhaps not worthy of a Rogers and Hammerstein song, but there you have it.  I love hearing a writer read their own work out loud.  The intonations, the pauses, the punch lines.  It’s like they wrote it.  Though Sedaris could probably read the back of a cereal box, and he would floor me.  22:02.  Sigh.