Train Station Peanuts

This was something that happened a week ago at the 99th Transit Center. I was coming home from work the night before I started staying at the hotel with HOST. (Due to the incredible winter weather that shut down most of Portland) It was cold. It was bitingly cold. And apparently that threw some sort of switch in my brain. (Perhaps that was sort of prophetic of things to come?) 

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The wind was fierce and the snow had the habit of sneaking inside my coat, but it was the cold that waged the worst battle. My hands dug deep into my pockets, my chin dipped low into the fuzziness of my grey scarf, I tried to shield myself from the most brutal of Mother Nature's beating. The train station was crowded despite the late evening hour and yet it still somehow managed to feel deserted. We were all of us islands, withdrawing as deeply as we could within our layers and ourselves. Why waste warm air on words? Why chill your fingers for the sake of a handshake? Better to conserve body heat at the expense of interaction.

When I made out with a guy for the first time at sixteen, seven minutes felt like hours. It was a planned event of course, as all momentous occasions were for me. When I went swimming off the coast of an Australian island, I wanted those seven minutes to stretch as far as my breaststroke could make them.

Standing at that train stop that evening, however, seven minutes felt like a pool fit for drowning in. If there'd been a wall not covered in a fine sheeting of ice, I'd have banged my head against it. If there'd been a shelter available that didn’t sport a row of icicles overhead that more resembled magical daggers, I'd be elbowing others clear enough for a spot.

Okay, those were all lies. I wouldn't have banged my head against a wall or elbowed other people, because I was not the type of woman to make a scene. That premeditated make out session at sweet sixteen had been at home, on my couch, during a movie of people getting lost in space. That dive down under had been a rare abandonment of caution, as I had heard jellyfish called blue bottles were known to be seen in the water. I was not a woman of public displays, of scenes. This did not mean I did not seek adventure. It only meant that those adventures were planned and pursued alone, as company added variables and variables meant spontaneity and I could not suffer spontaneity. I could, however, suffer the cold.

An ETA of seven minutes was posted everywhere, on the digital schedule posted overhead, on the high tech phones of the people who loved their gadgets, on the watches of the people that didn't. As seconds passed, feet stomped the ground to stay warm, hats were continuously yanked down over ears and cell phones and watches alike were peeked at too often.

And what was I doing? What I always did and that was doing everything I could to be my own island. I kept my eyes averted, kept my body turned aside from the direction of others, made certain to only check the overhead timetables when others weren't. All of these efforts made so that others wouldn't engage me in a conversation, because conversation meant automatic awkwardness when I had to navigate its conclusion.

But that evening, after an eight hour shift serving coffee at an international airport, I wasn't being a very attentive island. My body was twisted towards the street and the oncoming wind, because getting slapped in the face with ice sharp as shards of a shattered windshield was better than being drawn into a conversational entrapment.

"Hey," A female voice said suddenly and because it was human reflex to do so, I turned towards the source. "Would you like some chocolate covered peanuts?"

"Sure. Thank you." I held out a hand gloved in neon aqua. I popped back the chocolate and the burst of sweetness must have made my marbles explode like firecrackers, because not only did I not move away, but I also made no attempt to fill the quiet my acceptance of candy had caused.

"They say the rails are freezing over," The woman with salty hair offered the peanuts to another man standing with us who was older than she. "By tomorrow morning, there won't be any trains running at all."

"I'm here from the coast," The man shook his head at the chocolate in the yellow bag. "I was supposed to take a bus back, but none of those are going anywhere either. I'm lucky I've got family here in Portland."

They're talking, having a conversation, a random, in the middle of nowhere, for no reason chit chat. Uh oh. How did I end up standing here? I should be over by the pillar with the maps posted on all four of its sides.

"I'll bet the weather out on the coast is worse than it is here, being closer to the water and all. You should probably count yourself lucky you got stuck here, bus or no bus." Holy crap, now I was participating!

"At least a bus would be warmer than standing here waiting for a train." That was another guy; somebody wearing four puffy coats and three rolling suitcases at his feet. I tried to imagine him linking them together and pulling them through the airport. Considering the flowers all over two of them and the peace signs adorning the third, I waged a good guess that not all the luggage was his.

"Well hell," I smiled despite there being no pressure to do so, despite the public lighting being too weak to illuminate it. "A doghouse on Christmas morning would be warmer and that's without the dog."

They laughed, even though I used a dry voice and the wind was so harsh at our backs, it tried to steal my humor. They laughed little laughs into their collars, their scarves, the top buttons of their fleece lined coats. I smiled inside, though tentatively, still waiting for the awkwardness to set in and drive me towards the escape route I always kept at the ready.

And indeed, silence snuck in at the tail end of our laughter and my insides tightened, then eased. Maybe it was the cold roaring in our ears such that it wasn't a complete quiet. Maybe it the unceasing battle Mother Nature was waging on the rails and us, but in that moment, the four of us were an island unto ourselves. I didn't know why they were standing with me and frankly, I was at an utter loss as to why I was standing with them. My voluntarily remaining in a circle that wasn't talking was as likely as my telling a handsome customer at work that if he didn't go out with me, he'd be getting a hot medium roast coffee in the face.

I stayed rooted to my spot until my train finally came. As it pulled into the station and I gathered together my bag and sadly empty coffee cup, I bid them goodbye with a wave and a thank you. We didn't know each others names and we didn't know where each other was going. We'd wasted warm air on words, but performed no handshakes. Climbing the stairs into the train car, I wondered what had made tonight's silence safe enough to house me.

Maybe it had just been the peanuts.