Train 79
I have taken the train to Windsor a dozen times each year starting in 2004, when I began university in a city far, far away.
When you take the train enough, you acquire certain train-taking skills. You know just when to leave work in time to catch the subway and collect your ticket and secure a spot in line for the best people-watching vantage. You know about finding a favourite seat (half-way up the car in a window’s back half for the widest view, and on the south side traveling toward home so you can see the skyline and the lake and the crumbling brick stations and the people-catching-people as they spill off the train). You’ve learned how to wedge your ticket stub in the plastic crevice of the seatback in front of yours for the ticket collector to collect. And once you reach London, if you still have your now-empty paper coffee cup from the coffee you bought just before Oakville Station, you smile and ask the attendant for a refill when he returns with the snack cart. He will smile and wink and tell you he’s not supposed to refill your coffee cup. But he will anyway. And you thank him, because the coffee on Train 79 is not the murky dishwater that non-train-takers would expect to find aboard.
Always, London Station signals half-way home.
When you take the train enough, you get to know the other people on the train – out of your large sample, you establish a Typology of Train Takers. Most of these train-takers fit your first type, the Distracted Ones. With two little white buds growing out their ears, their perpetual springtime blooms.They are listening to music or movies or maybe a book on tape. They are lost inside a dome of noise – sometimes it spills over to where you sit, and hopefully not with a pulsating bassline.
In the seat next sits the Serious Business Man with his ThinkPad and loosened tie. He likes the leg room and the young lady next (you) who looks (fingers-crossed) particularly untalkative. He’s too busy for conversation, what with his spreadsheets and blinking BlackBerry: counting his stars for money. Before he counts he feasts. He orders a turkey sandwich with baby carrots and ranch dip, and a cheese plate, and a little green canister of sour-cream-and-onion chips, and a can of Diet Coke. He pays the attendant $16.50 for his cellophane banquet. As he chews, he casts dire glances at the Family with Children in the four-seater, with the infant whose scream will soon distract from his sky accounting.
The Gazer packed her very best library book to while away the hours. As she reads, she listens to pieces of conversations and the clack-clack-clack of wheels meeting track and inevitably, she reaches into her seat-pocket for the in-train magazine – to see if anyone has completed the puzzles, and if he used pen or pencil, and to check his answers. She’s abandoned her book to stare out her carefully-chosen window at the land and the lake and the escarpment, and more times than not, she spots most of the farm animals on her standard list of farm animals (a game of “Where’s Waldo?” with livestock). Especially now beneath the dramatic early-winter sunset and its unearthly glow that illuminates each beast. Cow. Horse. Sheep. Pig. Check.
When you take the train enough, you know to call dad just outside Chatham to deliver your boilerplate message: “Hi! We’re running 15 minutes behind. I will see you at 11:30?” And because this is the Toronto to Windsor route, and all the truly billingual attendants go north to Montreal, the final call rings over the loud-speaker as you approach Windsor Station, first in English and then in very butchered French nous vous souhaitons une agréable journée. You note the offended Francophones aboard.
Always, when feet meet platform, dad waits in his usual parking spot, and he intercepts your cream-and-brown-and-navy plaid bag, and you breathe the breath you keep deep inside for these first minutes home. Because Windsor Station is next to the brewery with its billowy fermenting yeast clouds that mingle with the car exhaust and damp asphalt and river. The air of reunion pools in your nostrils and it’s the best bad smell you will ever know.
P.S.: Thanks, Lan, for the nudge.
[Image: Train Window by Chambo25 on flickr]
Others
I have mentioned before that I’m an introvert. That’s understating things. I’m painfully introverted. I was reminded of it twice this past week. Once, as I walked alone into a networking event a friend was hosting, took one look at the drinking and mingling and did all I could not to flee. The second was over lunch with a group of 10 or so from my office. Saying introverts are terrible at small talk is spot on. I am a mess. I ended up at the very far corner of the long banquet table and poked at my fries. And I tried to chime in. Weather! Weddings! Buying houses! Over the years, I’ve become better. I work a boardroom okay. I speak up in meetings. I love being in front of a room, teaching people and sharing stories. But put me in a place that I have to solo-navigate: a bar, a cocktail party, the hallways of a conference, a long banquet table, and I’d better have someone to cheer me on.
Here’s something I have learned: I like people and being with people more than I once admitted. I’ve taken shelter behind my introversion for many years. It’s a sturdy excuse. I don’t want to go to dinner. I want to spend a weekend bumbling around the house. It’s been a people-filled week. I need alone time. We do grow older and – a little – wiser. Here’s what time has taught me: introversion is a selfish excuse for solitude. Being alone is okay. But it’s not okay for me to use a tidy label to hide from others.
Because time has taught me one other thing: sometimes, other people are kind of magical, if we take time to see them.
Like this weekend. On Friday I bolted home from a late night at the office and met Sameer for my first patio dinner of the year (aside: if you’re in Toronto, and you don’t visit House on Parliament often, you are missing some tasty food and service). We walked back to my place for tea. Andrew was in town for the first week of baseball season, and we met him for drinks at the Cobourg – a place that feels like my grandma’s living room, only very dark, with Daft Punk pulsing from someone’s laptop speakers. Nevermind that I doused the three of us in red wine with an overenthusiastic embrace. Friday was lovely. And Saturday, too. Max’s parents invited me for a concert at Koerner Hall, with its dramatic swirling wood ceilings to stare at. And so I put on a pretty silk dress and had an impromptu dinner with his brother and sister-and-law. I listened to some jazz with a generous family, who aren’t mine, but make me feel welcome. On Sunday, that same housemate and I had a late brunch and meandered over to High Park, to experience its few days of cherry blossoms in bloom. We rode through the park on a little red trolley, and we shared banana-chocolate-almond trail mix.
All this isn’t to annotate my weekend. It’s to illustrate something. I didn’t spend my alone time alone as usual, with my books and thoughts and pots and pans and cups of tea. I found, in others, something else to fill me up. Maybe it’s spring and that trees are blooming makes me more open, too – to change, to togetherness, to good people whose company I choose to keep.
Lentil salad with carrot and orange
Very loosely inspired by Light of Lucia‘s lentils – recipe updated Sept. 19, 2010 with a few tweaks – I make this so often!
After a weekend of pub dinners, this spring salad is something special. In my experience lentils can taste kind of muddy, but here they’re perked up gently with orange, coriander and long ribbons of lightly-fried carrot. The salad tastes even nicer as it ages and all its parts mellow. All the better to make ahead and share with others for lunch.
Ingredients
2c dry French green lentils (often labeled as Puy)
3Tbsp olive oil
1 tsp ground cumin
4 cloves garlic, chopped
2tsp grated fresh ginger
3-4 large carrots, shaved into ribbons
zest of one medium orange, rasped (reserve a slice for the lentil water)
juice of one medium orange
coriander leaves, to taste, for serving
salt and pepper, to taste
Simmer the lentils in salted water with reserved slice of orange rind until cooked through, about 25 minutes. Meanwhile in a shallow pan, heat the olive oil with the ground cumin and onions over medium heat until it gives off fragrance and onions are translucent. Add the garlic and ginger, and cook until fragrant. All the while, taste and salt the mixture. Add the orange juice and carrot ribbons and cook until crisp-tender, about 5 minutes. Remove from heat and add orange zest, stirring well to incorporate.
Drain the cooked lentils and combine with the carrot mixture, tasting for seasoning. Add the coriander leaves and serve. This tastes great with a dollop of thick Greek yogurt served over top.
Makes 6 one-cup servings.
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