Lost Opportunities

Morning Trax 

I have started hanging my digital camera round my neck so when I come upon a likely candidate for a picture I will have the camera ready to take action. This has been handy for buildings and the occasional moving trains and such...items with out claims to a soul or self. I am still too to shy to ask someone for their image. Today was one of those days when I would have loved to have the courage to have asked this ancient women riding on the bus this morning going in to work.

All the people with disabilities who ride the train have to enter the train on the first car of the train for a bunch reasons the main reason is the first of th train is the only car people with disabilities can access. This women who must have been late seventies or early eighties hobbled onto the train the stop after I got on. All bent over, clutching a cane bundled up in an over coat and leather shoes opened up at their tops from legs too large to lace tight. When a person access the train the driver has to come out of his cockpit, open the doors and lay down a metal ramp, they call the “bridge” then the person rolls or walks on board. Mike the driver lets the senior and she hobbles bast me and sits in one of the first seats available, in this case next a studious looking young Asian male. The train can be a rough ride sometimes with a fair amount of rocking, jerking as it trundles down the track. Well, Grandmother stretches her arm along the back of the seat and round this young student, who immediately bridles and pushes himself as far into wall of the car as physics will permit, to hold her self upright on her trip. The Asian student gets up at the next stop and moves three seats back.
It's a quiet trip today. Nobody is talking, lot of reading, listening to MP3 and staring out the windows. But grandmother is just jabbering up a storm mostly to her self. She has tried to engage a few of her fellow riders but really to no avail. She has never ridden the train before, this is apparent. Grandmother is sitting across the isle from me and engages me in mini-conversations. She asks a couple of times, when the train slows or begins turning as we get inner city if we can get off the train here or there; which if she had ever ridden the train would know the train stops at the designated stations on the route. I finally asked her what her destination was. And she then told me it was the Courthouse Station, which was the next stop. At the Courthouse stop everyone in the front car interested in Grandmother, and explained how to get to the courthouse from the station and cautioned her to be extra careful crossing the street. It was not yet 7:30 but the morning traffic was building caution was required. She hobbled off the car then I remembered by camera. I pulled the camera out of my jacket and tried to get a fist snap of her through the windows of the train but was not fast enough. I had lost my chance. I did not ask her what her business was at the courthouse that would have been way out of line. I speculated that what ever her reason had to be important to get this grandma out of bed this early on such a cold March morning: a grandsons appearance, maybe paying bail or maybe it was as the cancer survivor who is part of th first car group...maybe she had jury duty.