The other day, my friend Nik told me the story of a crying woman on the 4/5 train who, it became apparent as she sobbed to a friend, was on her way downtown to identify the body of a loved one who had overdosed. It seemed that she had found out the bad news that morning and looked as if she had been crying nonstop since. Her friend comforted her as far as Union Square and then left the train, reminding her that she should call him and his wife if she needed anything.
The woman continued to sob alone until another woman excused herself from the mass of other passengers the train and asked if she could pray with the crying woman. They bowed heads and quietly murmured healing words to one another until other people from other parts of the train car came to rub her back, lay a hand on her shoulder, and whisper encouragement.
Nik was touched with the way strangers offered the only thing they could to the woman that morning and likened it to my story of the woman who had been vomited on in the train but expressed more concern for the vomiter than for her trousers. Nik saw it as proof that New Yorkers are generally good people who get a bad rap for being rude simply because the crowded streets demand it.
I saw it as something entirely different, which is proof that no matter how often I tell myself that life without a car is superior, there are times when it sure would come in handy. The public nature of grieving here–in apartments filled with roommates because we can't afford to live alone, in funeral homes set along 5th Ave. with shoppers looking in the windows, in graveyards where thousands of bodies rest shoulder-to-shoulder with strangers–is joyous in some ways and indecent in others. Maybe to that woman, being alone with her thoughts and her tears would've been the worst fate that morning. But for me, being without my car and its privacy would have been much worse.
Comments
Life w/out a car in the city is only superior if you don't own your own car because you have hired a full-time driver to cart you around. :)
Do you think you feel that way because you grew up with the privacy offered by car travel and wide-open spaces? Or do you think native New Yorkers feel more comfortable having other people around? I know I use my car as a place where I can really let go and just cry if I need to -- especially if I'm driving out in the country where there's no one around to look in.
Some random crazy woman on the metro said "It's okay to walk around barefoot only if you have shoes at home." Which is to say, it's okay to be the one going without, as long as you are able to go with. Maybe she wasn't so crazy. That's more a reply to the comments than to your post. My reply to your post is: I lived in a sorority house. I sometimes cried louder because I knew I needed someone, and sometimes I was crying silently because I needed to be alone.
People are able to hold it in for the length of a subway ride. She needed someone. She allowed someone to hear her, to pray with her, until she got home. If she had needed to be alone, she would have thought of something, anything, else. She would have been silent until she got home, would have been able to hold it in, if she had needed to. She needed that moment. Promise. I have too.
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