Commute, or Going from Place to Place
by oscar Lledo Osborn
Sitting across from me on the train is a man. He is watching the trees cross the window hurriedly, his eyes darting back and forth between the edges of the window.
My dad is in the hospital from a fall. He’s fallen before, never broken anything more than a pinky. He broke his hip this time, and hasn't put together he’s not going to walk the same anymore, if at all. I helped him find his grip on the walker they gave him at the rehab wing. He walks looking down now, which he should have been doing all along, but it still stings to see a man so prideful asking his aging eyes to pick out which cracks on the street can be disregarded, and which might send him tumbling again.
Looking down, an oncoming pedestrian would see the top of his round bald head, speckled with freckles and blemishes from a half century of sun. Looking down, he is on a path and hard pressed to change it, his familiar streets now have new markers, not shop signs and news kiosks, but curbs, rumble strips for canes, gum and guano marking old Spanish sidewalk tiles. Looking down, you might see his hearing aids (or more likely not; the stubborn old man refuses to wear them), and notice he is adrift, floating down the street with little awareness, just routine.
The train slows, and with it, the man’s focus turns from the trees outside to a pigeon on the platform, eating a fallen scrap of a sandwich. The pigeon looks back at him. Did you want some?
Looking down, Dad won’t be looking at the people rushing by, the various characters he knows from his neighborhood. They won't see his grey-blue, cataract-traced eyes, and they won't see the glimmer in them that used to be his name. Their passing on the street will be reduced to a brush of wind, not an anecdote; an acknowledgement of a leather boot, not one of those brief catch-ups that refreshes the soul. What did you do on your walk today Dad?
I don't know.
I don't know.
On the train, we meet eyes like strangers do. We are both forgettable. We take no notice.