That Which Passes Us By

  When I was but a wee child, I loved to ride the train. I found nothing else fancier than watching the world zoom by outside the window at this amazing speed. Hills, mountains, cities, people and animals all merged together into an unrecognizable abstraction of deformed shapes and colors, most likely because my small mind was incapable of keeping up with this overwhelming speed.
  My mother was never a fan of trains, at least not for as long as I knew her. I often asked her how she could view this awe-inspiring event with negativity, but she would usually just smile and pat me on the head and say: “You will understand when you grow up.” One time I even made a promise to myself that I would always love trains, no matter what my mother said. I loved my mother, I merely wished to prove her wrong.

  One day, something changed. The ride started out the usual way: I found myself gaping as the scenery unfolding in rapid movement before my eyes, I asked my mother the usual question, and she replied with the usual answer. My mother would also sometimes mutter curses about the woman sitting on the row in front of us: Mathilda. This was something I never understood, because I found Mathilda to be a sweet old woman. I had even talked with her a few times while my mother was asleep (although I never told her of this). Mathilda would always smile and listen to me chatting about nothing. And she even loved trains like I did!
  There was nothing unusual about my mother disliking this old woman, but rather that the train stopped at a station that day. Mathilda slowly got up, smiled widely at me, nodded respectfully at my mother, before shuffling her way to the exit. The door slammed behind her, the train started moving again, and Mathilda was gone.
  Now there was no one in front of us. Nothing but rows of empty seats all the way to the door. Perhaps because of this revelation, my mother suddenly burst into tears.
  “Mommy, do you miss Mathilda too?” I asked innocently. I can even imagine my large, blue eyes as I did so, but I guess my mother was too busy crying to notice.

  For several years, my mother would continue to cry. She would cry her tear ducts dry, and then she would cry some more for good measure. I tried my best to comfort her, but what can a single, helpless teenager offer a grieving mother but a shoulder to cry on that she does not want? Not much, and after I came to that realization, I decided to ignore her as I went back to the fusion of shapes and colors taking place outside, still as amusing as ever.
  It was somewhere around this time that I first met Gregory. Gregory suddenly appeared one day in the seat directly in front of me; a bicycle helmet strapped on his head, a backpack on his back and black sunglasses. And he wore the smile. Oh God, I swear that smile could disarm a nuclear bomb. It was the widest grin you would ever see, so wide you’d think his chins would rupture and his eyes pop right out of their sockets.
  I greeted this strange young man – perhaps ten years older than me – with great enthusiasm. We talked for a bit, hoping it would somehow wake my mother up from her depression, but it was to no use. Gregory stayed from that day on. Always in the same seat. Always in front of me.

  More years went by, and the day had finally come for the train to halt again. I knew what this meant. It was something that I had feared, something that I could not control, something unavoidable outside of my grasp. My mother, still crying, waited a few moments before she finally talked to me for the first time in years.
  “Take care,” was all she said. She reluctantly dragged herself out the door and disappeared from my sight forever, her being nothing more than a memory from that moment on. Perhaps I should have cried, or at least shown some kind of emotion. Anything. But nothing came to me. Instead, Gregory twisted around in his seat and placed an assuring hand on my shoulder while pulling out his weapon of mass destruction: his massive grin.
  “Don’t worry; we will all have our turn.” I found it an interesting thing to say, albeit not very comforting.  I knew what he meant to say though, and I took the message to heart. But I would soon forget its meaning.

  Although Gregory and I started out on the right foot, my dislike for him over the years gradually grew. He talked without pause of amazing adventures across vast landscapes and oceans too deep to comprehend, and at first I could handle it. But when I was 46, I had enough. I told him that if he even thought about telling another story from his many travels, he would be in danger of losing a few teeth. While I don’t think he would have minded to lose another two (he was already missing three), he took the threat seriously and backed off.
  I unbuttoned my shirt as a sign of a hollow victory and fell back to my seat, sweat running down my forehead. Just the thought of Gregory’s grin made me kick my briefcase resting on the ground in blind anger before I fell back again. I breathed calmly, trying to remember my yoga lessons. One. Two. Three. Inhale. One. Two. Three. Exhale. I leaned my head to the window and closed my eyes, but never even once did I offer the outside a glance.

  All of a sudden Gregory’s day to leave had come. To me it seemed only yesterday that we first met, with my crying mother by my side, ignoring us both. It must have been quite the sight. Yet I knew that many a season had come and gone, and that was something I could not alter, only accept.
  As the train slowed, he turned to me and grinned. It was the grin of a happy man, and the grin of a man with nothing left to lose.
  “I have no regrets,” he announced and proudly marched on. No regrets. Perhaps he had been right, but it was too late to ask.

  Too late. Much too late, just like so many things. I had finally understood what my mother could see in the scenery outside and what I could not. Every time I looked outside, I could swear the train was going faster and faster, as if impatient to reach its destination. I did not want that. Was that a peak I could have challenged? I could not tell. Was that a city I could have visited? I did not know. Could I have spoken with that person? Questions like these started to haunt me, and there more I thought about them, the faster the train seemed to go. I became restless. Frantic. And then calm once more, understanding the futility of it all. I felt like vomiting. And crying. All the while I just sat there, staring at the bland environment outside, hoping that my station would never come.

  I hate trains.