what memories are for, part four

we bought a cookie and walked down the track to our train

it was the end of just another regular work day for most of the others on the train with us.  Q and i sat in the very first seat, to crowded by the time we got on the train to find a window seat, no matter, we had seen our fill, we were already overflowing with the sights of the day, and so the very first seat, the one that faces all the others,  sweet little green cowboy hat boy and his mom.  that day he was not yet three feet tall, that day his cheeks still had baby fat, that day hands still had baby fat, that day i could still pick him up and carry him when he was tired.

we pulled out a book that we had bought and the cookie and he sat on my lap, ate his cookie and began to listen to the story that i read quietly into one ear so as not to disturb the commuters who were already closing thier eyes before the train even left the tunnel.  Q too was asleep before the story or the cookie were half way finished.  his little head rested on my shoulder, brown curly hair on my cheek.  he was heavy in my arms, almost to the must-put-him-down point, but i didn’t, couldn’t, i just kept holding on, happy that he was still of an age where i could hold on like that, right there on a train, in public and he was happy.

there was a time, around that age, when Q suffered from one ear infection after another.  he was a stoical little boy and we never had any indication that he was coming down with an ear infection until somewhere around midnight he would wake screaming and we would spend the next night or two sitting up all night with him,  I would take the first half of the night and Y would take the second.  we would sit in the rocker in his room and hold him upright so that the pain wouldn’t wake him and he could get a full night sleep.  one morning Y asked me how i was managing to get through my half of the night.  i told him when i got really bad i would imagine myself in the front row of a pew at church on the day of his wedding.  i imagined myself sitting there wishing for just one more night where i could sit holding him for hours and hours and hours, just to breath in the smell of his curls.  Y looked at me and said with a look of disbelief on his face “his wedding?”  i nodded, smiled.  he frowned back and as he walked out of the kitchen with his coffee cup in his hand he said over his shoulder “yeah…ok…well, that’s not going to work for me.”

men are different.  this time though he wasn’t sick and i wasn’t awake at some ungodly hour.  and so as the train delivered it’s steady rhythem we moved forward together mother and child.  several tired people stared absently at as, occasionally smiling, happy i suppose that this was a sleeping child and not an awake chatting one.  half way home the train stopped at a major hub and i sat watching the long line of commuters waiting to disembark.  the people at each stop on the route have their look and this particular stop always has the best dressed group.  expensive coats, cashmere scarves and polished shoes.  at the end of this particular line there was a gentleman that looked to be in his late 70′s or older.  he looked fit, not frail in any way.  he was well dressed in a camel colored overcoat and they type of fedora that you mostly see in Cary Grant movies.  i watched him slowly approach us, smiling perhaps at the memory of an uncle of mine that he reminded me of, who was about the same age and still going into chicago to work at the law practice he had spent decades  building up.

when he had reached our seat, he leaned down and quietly said “my mom used to take me to the city too.”  i looked up at him and he was smiling and then he nodded and walked out the door and off the train.  i felt my heart beating in my chest, the tears wellling up in my eyes.  I hugged him tighter and he squirmed to be free, just a bit, of all that love.