On
a summer evening in upstate New York in 1954, my father brought my older
brother and my ten year old self down to Utica’s Union Station to watch the
Twentieth Century Limited thunder through the city without stopping.
Inaugurated in 1902 and running daily until 1967, the Limited carried
fathers and brothers and grandmothers and lovers from New York City to Chicago
each day. Every night it brought back another group of souls, arriving at
Grand Central Terminal in Manhattan well after midnight.
At
nine p.m., she exploded through Utica’s station at full throttle, pounding down
the platform at seventy miles per hour to where we stood. I felt my
father's hand grab on to the back of my shirt collar, an oddly comfortable
feeling. A tornado could not have wrested me away from his strong grip,
so tightly did he hold me safe. When the train burst past us a mere ten
feet away, the enormous sound and the blast of air were magnificent. A lighted
blue eye on the end of the last car quickly sped away from us down the track to
wherever trains go. She had taken my breath away and won my heart.
Eleven
years later, the redheaded girl meeting me at Grand Central Terminal was
quickly winning my heart. Each time her blue eyes rushed at me, they took
my breath away. I had asked her to meet me in the center of the main
concourse, under the clock, a romanticism from bygone movie scenes. We
were going north to my parent’s home for the weekend.
I
arrived early so I could watch her as she approached, unaware of my
presence. I hoped that viewing the young woman from afar would help
explain why she was changing my ideas, my plans and my life. I looked up
to see her descending the escalator. Like an angel she scanned the crowds
below in search of the boy she’d been sent to make happy, and then I understood
that a blessing doesn’t need an explanation.
When
she reached the floor and started my way, I hid behind the large round
Information Booth, watching her for just a few more seconds.
Then I popped out and spoke.
“Is
it the man of your dreams you’re looking for?” I asked.
“No,”
she said, “only the man I’m going to marry.”
“And
how could you be sure of that?” I said, surprised not by her intention, but her
voicing it. She looked me in the eye, and in the most matter of fact way
said, “Because it’s you I want with all my heart.”
I
swallowed, or tried to.
“Then
I won’t be disappointing you,” I said.
On
the train, we held hands like teenagers, for we weren’t much beyond those
years. The river and the hills seemed to fly past us, but in reality they
sat still, like old married couples on a porch, watching two youngsters hurry ahead into life. At my parents’ house that
weekend, we were never apart, never in separate rooms. Except at night, by
patriarchal decree.
She
went back to work in the city on Sunday evening. I followed a few days
later, when I had finished helping my parents move to the small apartment they
rented in readiness for their later years.
And
then I was standing with my father on the rail platform once again, this time
waiting for the train to take me back to New York. I told him I was
getting married.
“To
the redhead, is it?” he said, as if he’d been elsewhere for two days and not
seen the girl and I mooning over each other and gamboling about like puppies.
I
said yes.
“Is
she the one for you, then?” he asked.
I
said yes, she is.
The
train arrived, pounding fast down the platform, coming to get me. My
father put his hand up behind me and grabbed my collar and held on. When
the last car stopped before us, he sighed. And this time, he let go.
David Griffin copyright 2009
The Windswept
Press
Murrells
Inlet, South Carolina
www.windsweptpress.com
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