I took my brother's wife to the train station.We said our goodbyes on the platform, and she boarded the train. It wasn't the first time I'd dropped her off or picked her up from there, but this time it felt different.
Perhaps it wasn't that the experience itself that was different, just that everything else had changed.
The passengers exited the train to stand in the cold and smoke, or to simply stretch their legs. Others were just boarding, going home or somewhere new. I just stood and watched in the dark and cold on a December night. Neither coming, nor going. The evening train rolled out of town soon enough.The station returned to looking abandoned and lonely.
It was a significant moment at the end of a trying year. I wondered how many people over the years had come and gone from that very point. I marveled at the stories that must be associated with their departures and returns. Even though I was neither of those things in that moment, I knew: I would have to choose. At some point, I'd be making a choice about where to go. Even if it was only a metaphor and not my moment to get aboard; I knew I could stay as long as I'd like, but I'd be unable to go back from where I'd come, and that ultimately the only choice would have to be forward, into the unknown.
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