Scenes from a Life: In Transit {4/9}

She was born and raised in Windsor, Ontario, and spent much of her youth across the border in Detroit. Both places home to a once-thriving auto industry. So you can imagine how strange it is to her car-crazy family that she doesn't own one. 

A downtown dweller, she travels Toronto mostly on foot and by public transit. The commute to work is ingrained in her daily routine. She makes plans in transit, and to-do lists in a notebook she keeps tucked in a side pocket of her bag. She gets a jump on the morning's email on transit, and lets the day's stress begin to unspool on the evening end.

She reads in transit. Poetry, fiction, memoir, essay, news. It depends on the day and her mood. She watches people in transit. What they do, wear, say. Humanity is on display as people pass from one place to another.

She knits in transit. She finds the rhythm of it calming. Men of a certain age are particularly intrigued by this activity. They often make a point of occupying a vacancy next to her, just so they can share stories about their grandmothers. She is delighted by how many men have fond memories of women who knit. She does, too.

But she also dreams in transit. Looks out the window and lets her mind wander. Every so often, emotion swells. A memory will crash up against the notes of a song in her ears, and the world will fall away. Just like it did that time an older woman in a flowing turquoise dress sat beside her. The woman had presence: regal, wise, sighted, composed. Such energy only amplified the emotion she was feeling.

She reached up and brushed a tear away ~ discreetly, she thought ~ just as it slid below the rim of her sunglasses. But the woman beside her saw, and knew. The woman beside her reached over and gently laid a palm over her hand. She turned towards the wizened face, removed her glasses. The woman looked deeply into her eyes, searched them. They held each other's gaze in silence. Finally, the woman nodded her head, almost imperceptibly, and squeezed the fingers of the hand she was holding. 

"He knows," she said. "He knows what you are." 

It's the thing about a life in transit she will never cease to be astounded and humbled by: Encounters with grace.

______________________________

Soundtrack: Orenda Fink, "Holy, Holy"