A rainy Thursday morning

The train is about to leave Penn Station in New York City. A twenty-something woman hoists her roller bag into the overhead compartment and settles into the window seat. An announcement crackles through the overhead speakers, the train will be near capacity. An elderly couple shuffles by, dragging their luggage, hoping to find two seats together. A man, perhaps a college student, stops.

“Is this seat taken?”

“No.” The woman smiles and pulls her coat into her lap.

He sits, putting his backpack on the floor at his feet. A paper to-go cup of coffee perches in the center of the woman’s tray table. Just as they get settled, she knocks the cup off the table onto the floor between their feet. Somehow, the plastic lid hangs on.

The “I’m so sorries” begin to fly along with the “no worries.” He easily changes the subject. 

“Where are you heading?”

“Boston, for a work meeting, and you?” 

“Yeah, Boston. I’m crashing on my buddy’s couch for a few days.” 

“Are you from New York?”

“No, from San Francisco. I’m traveling the East Coast, you know, for fun.”

“Oh, cool,” she replies, her interest piqued. “So where does your friend live in Boston?”

“Ha, ha, I don’t know,” he chuckles. “Just Boston. But he goes to MIT.” 

Their chemistry is instant and easy. Their exchange is just deep enough to carry the conversation for a few more moments. The train jerks forward, but their exchange comes to a slow, polite halt. Human silence fills the rail car, leaving space for the squeal and rattle of steel wheels on steel rails to sing their song.

“Next stop, New Rochelle,” the announcement interrupted the song only briefly.

A rainy late October Thursday morning, easing its way toward the weekend. A train easing its way northbound. An easy conversation takes them nowhere, but leaves a sense of sweet humanness in its wake.

Sometimes I watch small moments unfold and can’t help wondering how they’ll live on in each person’s memory. Maybe she’ll remember the spilled coffee. Maybe he’ll remember her laugh. Or maybe their experience will fade into the blur of travel — one of those fleeting encounters that remind us how human connection often finds us in motion, between places, between plans.

And yet, somehow, it lingers.