Thoughts on the Metro

Covertly, one can take pictures of almost anything on the Metro, and so she did: a guy with a traumatic scar on his leg, band-aids seemingly fused and lost in his former wound; a child swinging around a pole -- losing his balance as the train swayed back and forth. But there are things you don't take pictures of, and, at the time, I didn't have an answer for my friend when she asked, "But why can't I?"

It's just an understanding.

Our other friend pointed them out-- the sweet couple a few rows back on the train; she was sleeping, resting on her husband's shoulder so comfortably you knew they were soulmates. Although I would have liked to have seen it, a copy of the New York Times Book Review kept her face from me. Her curled, short, pewter-colored hair rested against his chin. Her husband, in a straw, fedora-like hat, held his chin at an angle almost perpendicular to the paper, reading through his bifocals. He had a wide mouth and dark eyebrows, spots of age didn't overwhelm his sharp face. He and his wife were on their way home, late on a Sunday night, just like us-- only she fell asleep, her head in that familiar place she'd known for years. He didn't move but to turn the page of his paper; his shoulder may have been asleep, but she was too.

This is bliss. You don't take a picture of it, but you take it with you if you can. Something so simple and familiar that it means the world -- whether you're inside and part of it or outside looking in. And that's the understanding.