Homebound Snippets
I’m back home for Passover, an intuitive decision rather than a mandated one. My university classes do not demand attendance, and homesickness had begun to settle in.
Todd was the first Uber driver I ever had that overshared. A portly man with stringy gray hair, foggy glasses, and a sun spot on his upper right cheek, he came off very unassuming at first.
He started the conversation by commenting on the figure of a college aged redhead as we whizzed past the Diag on the left and the Union on our right.
“I was married to one for seventeen years, you know,” he told me as he unscrewed the cap of a tall Cherry Coke and poured it into a Big Gulp cup. “Dunno how I managed to keep her for that long,” he said with a belly laugh.
Like many Uber drivers, Todd was on the older side and doing it for supplementary income to keep food on the table after retirement. He told me he was a retired medic. Like a military medic? I asked. No, a private one. EMS.
It was eventually too much for him to handle, he croaked. He told me from it, he got PSTD. And that he wanted autonomy from working for others after so many years (it doesn’t sit right when bosses still condescendingly treat you like an inexperienced teenager).
As he bemoaned his life, I offered what sympathy I could, pondering how many Todds there might be, not only in Middle America, but around the world. People with not necessarily the worst life or most eventful life, but lives deeply lived in. Tom’s voice, his demeanor, face, and body– were distorted and jaded with the weight of time. It was striking to me, that at one point, Todd was a newborn babe, full of life and newness. And yet, some fifty sets of twelve months later, he sat in front of me, sour and worn by the power of Time.
The plane rocked and warbled a bit in its preparation for landing. Slowly, I peeled down the window cover to see the city of my birth. It always feels mildly comedic seeing cities from above– they look so… small. Like a fledgeling little ant colony hanging on to the rim of the earth. New York, not to much surprise, looks a fun sized Lego set from thousands of feet above.
Most captivatingly, though, I was taken aback by the beauty of the water from above. Five minutes away from approaching the landing strip, we steered around the Atlantic– and I couldn’t see anything but the endless blue of the sea. It was so serene, as if we were flying toward Middle Earth's "sea in the West" or touring Dune's Caladan.
And the way the sunlight met the sea was breathtaking. The water shimmered with light, and the geometry of it was all so delightful to look at. I felt myself narrating it in my head as I was looking at it… “the sunlit sea, the air hanging golden over it”. I marveled at the blue below, wondering how many frothy white lines were boats or waves.
Such a sight, I think, should be witnessed weekly. A reminder of nature's majesty and the enormity of the world, dwarfing our brief and silly existence. No man could ever illuminate an entire ocean as the sun did that day.
I was thrilled when I realized I had just nonchalantly booked an off peak ticket to Grand Central from the LIRR. Just the year before, my brothers and I toiled in the summer heat traveling like a ragtag team of musketeers during the 30 minute walk from Penn Station to Grand Central. And now, I could just go there by a simple one way connection.
Like any new train station, Grand Central Madison felt very much like a spaceship. It’s nearly all white, and doesn’t have the reek or musk of Penn. It felt pristine and clean.
My favorite part of it, of course, were the escalators. I rode a few of them, and man, they were tall. It never fails to be a striking and mildly psychedelic experience when you can see people standing nearly vertical over you like on a massive escalator. In this self moving conveyor belt vestibule, surrounded by a crystalline green, you share space with total strangers as you traverse dozens of feet in altitude. It felt a bit like the Blue Danube scene from 2001, with all the pastel colors and strange visuals. Kubrick would have loved Grand Central Madison.
It feels very nice to be back at home. Though I sleep late back at home, it feels easier to sleep and I feel more well rested. As much as my family could annoy me at times, it’s better to have them around than to be cooking alone in my dinky little Ann Arbor kitchen. Being a young adult– no less a transfer student at a new school hundreds of miles from home– can be such a painfully lonely experience sometimes. I’ve learned to appreciate the time you get to be around loved ones.
And, best of all: hearing the morning birds of my childhood chirp gave me so much happiness.