Observations

It’s summer now, or at least feeling  like it. Families are coming out of their hibernation with the sun and heat. The kids don’t seem to care that they are in the middle of baking concrete city. They look up and see impossible buildings and cars beyond their count.

I love watching little kids at the train station. I see them in their little groups, sweaty kid and mother. Each trudges bags through the concourse, only the little one has stopped to stare at the windows so high and letting the last of the light in before it’s blocked by the next building. The unbaggaged ones run in between the crowds of people heedless of the heels of the woman on a date, or the commuter bag of the woman back from a business trip. They weave through the high school kids, who don’t give them a second glance as they are too absorbed with rehashing their time on the beach. They slide along the concourse floor and yell up to the ceiling to see if there is a echo.

I’ve never seen a kid afraid of the train. The all want to get to close and touch the silver cars. They are facinated with the idea that the seats move so that on every trip they face forward. They smile at the passengers and wander away from parents. If the day has been long and hot, then then it isn’t long before they are asleep because of the rhythm along the tracks.

For the rest of us this wonder has worn off. The regular commuters are either finishing the last of our daily work, reading, or asleep ourselves. We look out the window but don’t see the landscape we’ve passed every day. Except for the stations themselves, there is  little urban planning to beautify rail lines.

But I still wonder at the train. These marvels that carry the thousands of us around each day. I still try to pay attention to the differences that I see along the track. The single railroad spike that sticks above the others. Who comes along and nails it back in?

I want to keep my wonder and so I see the children. I try and see what they see.