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Penn Station

Minutes after I posted my last post (literally minutes after), I got a phone call that my cousin Sean, who suffered from cystic fibrosis, had passed away.  I'd known he wasn't doing well, and that was perhaps (read: was) what was motivating my sentimental wandering through Wilmington last Sunday; taking in all that had happened, all that changed, all that was still to change.  Change - the only constant.

I traveled through "the city" (for those who have lived in or near Manhattan it is "the city" not "a city" or even "Manhattan") to get to Long Island to be with my family.  So, after a drive on winding Vermont roads, I boarded the familiar train in Albany that I took many times to get "home" when home, as in where I lived, was Brooklyn and Albany was "home" as in where I grew up.

Waiting to move through the sliding glass doors that contain passengers pre-trip in the waiting area in the Albany train station, I felt like I was "back".  It's continually surprising to me how natural one feels when re-introduced to a familiar but no longer current setting or place.  The doors opened and there I was, Penn-bound, moving like a regular down the escalator, onto the platform that smells of upstate air mixed with train exhaust.  I rolled my suitcase in the direction the conductor told me to as she pointed to two cars towards the front "New York, Penn Station."  Inside the comfortable, carpeted cabin, I found a seat and watched the Hudson whirl by as the steady rhythm of tracks beneath train punctuated my journey.

"Now arriving New York, Penn Station."  The words have hardly even been uttered and everyone's up - suitcases are flung from racks above seats, bodies are squeezed into the aisles and pushed out onto a platform.  Indoors.  In Albany, the platform is upstate air mixed with train exhaust.  In here, only exhaust.

Beauty doesn't touch Penn Station the way it does Grand Central.  Your arrival is gray, understated - there isn't much of a buzz, just travel.  I, also gray and understated, moved downstairs from the main concourse the way I always had before.  But this time - and somewhat to my subconscious surprise even though, intellectually, I knew - I did not board a subway bound for Park Slope.  I was in such a groove of dully reliving old practices that I'm partially surprised I didn't just routinely get on the thing out of habit.  Instead, I waited near a K-Mart embedded in the busy station that for some reason people shop in, and eventually I boarded a Hicksville-bound LIRR train.

In Long Island, a place I hadn't been for two years or so - a place that I went frequently enough as a child but then again, I wouldn't say frequently, I was home.  As I sat around a table with my family members looking through old photos, I had no pretenses, no desire to be anywhere but where I was.   Nor did I have any desire to be anything or anyone but who I am beneath the surface, in my heart. I was just there. Me. With them.  Days were spent in normalcy with people I don't get to see often enough, remembering a cousin I wish I could have seen more than I did. Days were spent with family.  Home.

On my last morning there, I was able to get breakfast with one of my best friends in the world, who lives in Long Island and who I hadn't seen since the night before I moved to Vermont.  Sitting there with her - a friend whom I do not need to pretend to be anything but myself in any way shape or form - I was again home.  When she said, "How is Vermont?" though my response was, "It's wonderful..." I didn't feel like I had to elaborate much.  I know that she can tell how different from my former sighs of frazzle the new tone in my exhale is (relaxed); I think she knows that my lack of detailed explanation about it all actually means "It really is very good."

Then it was back to Penn Station. I spent as little mental time as I could thinking about the dirt and exhaust clinging to my skin - I never realized, when I lived there, how horribly dirty New York City feels.  I ate two donuts (I forgot how easy it is to consume, there) and boarded my train.  Now, I was - in the technical sense - "going home".

For the first time, I traveled from New York to Albany by train without a return ticket.   And then another first - I arrived in Albany not to find my mom or dad or brothers or aunt waiting for me in the waiting area, but instead to find myself fumbling for car keys in my bag.  I'd arrived home, not for a visit - I'm a regular on this end, now.  Garret had left our car at the train station for me because he was still at work in the city. Rolling my suitcase on pavement I searched for the car, which I eventually found and got into, turned on, and drove away in.  Onto the highway, over to my mom's house - another version of home.   There I stayed in that world until Garret got back that night.  I had coffee with another dear, dear, dear friend.  Home.  And then, the familiar roads to Vermont.

In actuality I'd traveled through worlds that day.  Long Island to Penn to Albany to Latham to Vermont.  But all of them in their own way - home.  I was tired but I didn't feel I'd been through war; I'd just visited different versions of myself, materialized in structures and land passing by windows.

So my first journey "back" has come and gone.  It was for a sad reason - for something I was compelled towards - for something I wouldn't have missed for anything.  If it hadn't been so, I don't know when I would have gone.  But then, maybe that's the way my first journey "back" had to be.  Not a choice.

The next time I go, for something else, whatever that will be - I'll be deeper into "here".  I wonder though when (if) it will stop feeling like I'm going "back" and will instead feel like I'm "Going to New York."  I wonder when I won't feel reversed taking a round trip that - rather than being Albany-bound, begins and ends there.  Here.  Upstate air, with a fine mix of train exhaust and oxygen; an outdoor platform.

Does it leave you, New York?  Does anything?


.lsm