Farewell to the Rails

All of a sudden the name I picked for this blog is sort of historical, because Andrew and I just bought a car from my dad and I’ll no longer be commuting on NYC subways and NJ passenger trains with 5 hours of thoughts round trip to fill my head. The good news is I’ll have more time to type them. I just got home from work (mid-Jersey to Brooklyn) in an HOUR. Driving rocks.

A friend suggested I write about what train commuting has taught me over the last ten months. Here are a few thoughts.

#1: Timeliness. Trains don’t wait. I like to make the most of my time before I leave it to go do something else. Which means I often found myself sprinting for the subway on Tuesday and Thursday mornings after dawdling over getting dressed and gobbling down my breakfast. Eventually I decided I was tired of being that stressed out at 6:45 a.m., and I regulated my routine a bit better.

#2: Realism. I would love to say I read classics and the news on my morning train, and worked on a novel coming home plus making nice, quick menus to whip together for dinner. That was not to be. I hardly ever got meals planned. I slept in the mornings to make up for all the lazy nights when we didn’t make dinner till 10:00 or stayed up late watching Downton Abbey. My only literary achievements are scattered notes in my Moleskine plus occasional work drafts. I gave up on the news altogether. I did read a fabulous book on cooking, a Christian romance, a slim theology by Tozer, a history of New York City, a journalistic thing on political strategy, and all of Anna Karenina on the trains. Mostly I realized I needed to be realistic with myself. Although I had a routine, it was unbalanced, and I simply could not build much structure into my week when it came to reading, sleeping, cooking, and household chores. Thankfully, Andrew never hesitated to help out, so I also learned some things about teamwork. :)

#3: Community. This is the part I did the worst at. My irregular schedule not only destroyed my discipline at home, but it threw me off from planning get-togethers and one-on-ones with friends from school who live and work in the city. As a result I fell into the habit of being alone, often not realizing it was depressing me until after we got back from a gathering with friends. This is my biggest regret about the last ten months, and I hope that reducing my commute time will enable me to be a bit more sociable in New York and maintain higher quality relationships. I feel like, on the home front, I’ve pretty well absorbed the truth that “It is not good for man to be alone.”

#4: Need. Since the trains don’t stop at my office door, I had to be picked up and driven the last five miles to work. This made me feel like a drag, but my co-workers faithfully pitched in and went out of their way to get me where I needed to go. Joy, who works in constituent services, picked me up for months in spite of terrible back pain and the fact that my train schedule inconveniently shortened her workday. Ruthie, who also helps with constituent services, has raced the train to another town when my normal stop was flooded, and recently took me on a sightseeing tour of Bound Brook and Manville late at night when I miscalculated the arrival time of my train. Len, my boss and the busiest of them all, who is on call 24/7, was always mysteriously available when I was diverted to the Hoboken terminal and delayed an hour in the morning. And Q, who handles community relations and is our resident political strategist, rescued us from our surreptitious (and miserable) stay at the Howard Johnson in Newark when we had bedbugs. This has been extremely humbling for me. I don’t like to be in people’s way and need things. I like to take care of myself. But because of my co-workers’ generosity I have been convicted nearly every day I’m in the office about certain grains of cynicism that I allowed into my heart in college and was allowing to continue doing their nasty, acidic work. It’s hard to let that go, it’s true. But it’s also hard to let it go unchallenged when you have gentle people taking care of you generously, simply, and without stipulations. I’m grateful that God has used this time to soften my spirit, and that the sullenness and exhaustion of fifteen months ago have given place to a little more optimism.

As lovely as the trains have been, I’m glad to be driving now. Not only will it save me up to an hour and a half each way; it will  allow me to be more available for work-related events outside the office. Not to mention the balance it will bring to the Force—I mean, my schedule. It will mean greater freedom on the Brooklyn end to run heavy errands and visit friends, and it will let us go out of town more cheaply. We feel very blessed to have the car. I am not sorry to bid the trains adieu, nor am I reluctant to enter the fray of East Coast traffic. It's a blessing and a relief. But, all things considered, it’s also been worth the wait.