On a moving train, next stop: life

By Lisa A. Eramo

"Excuse me," I say, thrusting myself into the crowded rush hour train. Two teenage boys take one small step out of the way, rocking to the beat of their walkmans. My bag catches on their coats and they throw me a dirty look. My gaze moves past them and scans the row of seats on either side of the cabin. I spot one ten feet away and head for it.

As I go to sit down, I see why no one wanted this particular seat. Ink stains dot the middle and edges of the seat like rain spots on a newspaper. I grab the nearest pole as the train lunges into the next station. "Ruggles Street. Doors open up on the left" blares out over the intercom. The train comes to a halting stop. Doors click open and swallow those who enter. Five more people pile in and scramble to find something to hold onto. Doors slide shut and the train resumes its groan and hush like a snake woken from slumber.

From beyond the din of conversation, I hear someone say, "Jesus is the savoir of mankind." It is an old man wearing jeans cut off at his knee and a sweatshirt that says "Harvard University." He shoves his bible into the face of a businessman who continues to talk on his cell phone, ignoring the longhaired evangelist. I notice that the woman across from me is watching them as intently as I am watching her. Probably in her fifties, her book lays open on her lap, the crazy Jesus fan more interesting than Stephen King. Her hair is pulled up into a bun and her tortoise shell glasses are falling onto the tip of her nose. Her right stocking is falling down toward her ankle.

My gaze shifts to doors again. Open then close. I read a poster on the wall about free health care. Open then close. Two more stops have gone by. Leaned up against one of the doors, two teenagers kiss passionately, the black boy gently bending down to kiss the forehead of the white girl whose arms are wrapped around him. An elderly Asian man closes his eyes, his head bobbing up and down in an attempt to stay awake. A man in a black suite offers his seat to a pregnant woman and she takes it.

"I fuckin' hate school, dude" explodes from the rear of the train. There is some shoving and loud laughter as three boys get their kicks. They enjoy the attention received from making such a scene. I become aware that most of the passengers on the train are, in fact, students. Surrounded by a generation of middle school kids that curse and yell and talk about subjects I never dreamed of at that age, I am jealous. I am jealous of their books and their bags. I am jealous of their jeans and lunch hours. I am jealous of their schedules and study halls. I close my eyes and pretend that I am carrying a bag full of geography and biology books instead of reports for my department meeting.

The train moves so quickly that the landscape looks like a Dali painting--surreal and nonsensical. The vibration in my legs reminds me that I am alive and moving toward my next destination.

What an orange goldfish taught me

By Lisa A. Eramo

It began with a bright orange goldfish.

I'm not talking about my affinity for fish, nor am I talking about my affinity for the color orange. No, this fish was much more important than that. It was my first pet, and it taught me a very important lesson.

Picture this: I'm 7 years old, fish in hand, ready to conquer the world. I was thrilled--this beat taking care of any stuffed animal or toy doll. I placed the fish in our living room on a small table with a bright orange table cloth that matched its shining scales and fluttery fins. It swam around in its bowl, wriggled its tail when I fed it, and it seemed to exist for me and only me. I was the proud owner of a beautiful goldfish. I faithfully changed its water, fed it like a good mother would, and gave it lots of love and attention.

And as quickly as I had gotten used to the idea of being its most important companion, my fish friend was gone. In the middle of the night, it had jumped out of the bowl seeming to say, 'Hey, I'm too big for this bowl and there's more out there for me.'I was as devastated as a 7-year-old kid who just lost a fish could be. But at least the fish got a proper burial out under a big tree in our yard.

Losing a fish at the age of 7 in no way compares to the losses I've felt since then, but yet I still keep going back to that day--to the sheer confusion and sadness that I felt at that moment. The idea that I could cherish something with my entire being and lose it in a matter of moments was more than I could comprehend. The fish had been mine, and there was a part of me that felt responsible for its strange death. But then again, maybe it really was moving on to bigger and better things.

When you're young, you create stories to make sense of the world. I still do this. My paternal grandfather still visits me in my dreams now that he has passed away. I know that my maternal grandparents slow dance in heaven every night. One of my great-grandmothers who passed away at the age of 99 still writes in her journal every day. My most beloved teacher still teaches calculus in heaven to those who will listen. And my aunt, well, she watches it all as a quiet observer, smiling from the most beautiful cloud in the sky.

The reality is that people and things come and go. Relationships begin and end. It's the rhythm of life, and oh what an incessant rhythm it is. But even when you've got rhythm, there's always a bar or two that will throw you off. You're singing along to a familiar tune, and suddenly you've forgotten the words. You've plotted out how your journey will go, and suddenly you've lost the map.

This is why at the age of 29--after experiencing grief and loss of every possible magnitude and depth--I don't understand this emotion any more than I did as a kid. People like to use the cliche, "when one door closes, another one opens." I tend to think that these people are just trying to justify a loss that they don't understand. But the beauty of thinking positively is that after a while, you really do start to believe it, and next thing you know, a door does open. You walk through it, and low and behold, there are new roads on which to walk and new connections to make. Suddenly, your life is punctuated by deeper and more thoughtful relationships than you could have ever imagined.