Hello, Goodbye and Drinking Stella On Trains

Hellos, Goodbyes, and Drinking Stella on Trains

Day 1:

I expressed a preference: a front facing seat, beside a window, with a table and a socket.

           I did.

           I distinctly remember clicking on these options. Yes, I do. I was sober and awake.  And, yet, here I am about to squeeze into an aisle seat, facing backwards with a pull-down Formica table that could easily be mistaken for a sticky postage stamp. 

I apologetically sit beside a ginger veil of hair which cleverly works as a force field for a sensitive teenager. I know this emotion, this sensitivity. I recognise my teenage self as he frantically finishes a sentence in his red and black brocaded notebook. As I sit I manage to catch part of his story before he slides the words inside his coat. It reads, ‘I said goodbye’.

I ponder this. I ponder the sadness often attached to the final, short yet loaded word; I consider the regularity in which it is used and the differing emotions linked to its delivery. Our lives are, after all, a series of these goodbyes. Each day we bid a farewell to yesterday, to something, maybe to someone, and I wonder if the disposal of the word would make life a kinder place…If, though, we were to say adieu to goodbye, I consider what would become of hello. Would the word be thus redundant? If so, what would then become of reunion and reunite,if we had no need of goodbyes?

           I debate this until it is time to say goodbye to my pale writer, my silent companion. I desperately want to tell him that I’m a closet writer too. But it is a dirty, shameful secret, so I keep it to myself and hurl my bags to the exit and my connecting train. 

With false hope - I am generally an optimist - I rub flesh with scowling commuters and make a bee line for my next reserved seat. I am facing my past once more, but this time, thankfully, beside a window. With yet another miniscule tray reclaimed from a 1970s jumble sale, I manage to balance my laptop and angle my books whilst wedging my bags one on top of the other. I am trying to plan the week ahead, but my contortion skills are not what they used to be. My happiness in sitting alone is short lived. 

           I say goodbye to solitude and hello to Stella Man. 

           I am thankful for his politeness. He apologises for the overwhelming stench of beer. I smile but would prefer he apologise for his cheap after-shave, his lack of teeth and his vinegary foot odour. As my books topple, and I make to rescue them, my hand brushes his leg and I apologise for the second time today. He smiles and I wonder if he would mind me using the gap between his teeth as a wedge for my books. He attempts to draw me into a conversation regarding alcohol and hunger, but  I say I prefer wine. He turns back to his beer. 

          I see a woman leaning on the carriage door. She is reading silently to herself, though she mouths every word. 

          I watch another woman. Her hair pulled back so far that her eyes have become decidedly feline. She thinks she is safe from prying eyes  -  like the nose-pickers who wait at traffic lights, they feel somehow invisible to others and continue as if in the privacy of their own bathrooms. I watch this woman as she uses a pink hand-mirror and traces her fingertips around her face. Gently pulling her skin tight and then releasing it, she is pondering crows-feet. I know this emotion, this fear of time passing. I feel it too. She begins to pluck her eyebrows. Despite the jolts and stumbles of the train she keeps her eyes. I’m sure the lob-sided eyebrows will soon grow back.

          I manage to avoid eye-contact with Stella Man for the rest of the journey but as I make ready for my exit he offers to carry my bags. They are heavy, and heavy bags - along with door holding, giving up a coat and paying for dinner - are exempt from any feministic beliefs I hold. However, I fear the consequence of accepting his offer. I hastily decline, say goodbye, and hide in the putridly sweet toilet until my final connection arrives. Parting is not such sweet sorrow, and I am thankful for the word goodbye; it is soon followed by two welcoming hellos.

Day 2:

I am awake early and head for the cemetery. 

          Although I have said goodbye I seek the repetition. I slip words into the soil: things you always meant to say but somehow you missed the ticking of the clock. For a while I wander amongst the headstones and am momentarily confused. They face away from the church. I look up and see the fields beyond and agree it is a prettier view. I begin to look for an old friend, but he is lost somewhere in an expanding mass of others. I apologise for the intrusion as I trip between the stones. 

         Though eager to be heading home –  I am desperate to say hello to my husband and children - I rush around the village to chat and say several goodbyes’ to other loved ones. As I say goodbye to my Danish mother-in-law I am reminded that Goodbye in Danish is ‘Hej Hej’ (pronounced Hi, Hi) and I leave content with the thought that if we adopt this one phrase as our own we may rarely need to use ‘goodbye’ again. Goodbye could become an exclusive, rarely uttered, word used only to indicate a desired distance; a word reserved for those that drink stella on trains.