While waiting for Kaitlin to arrive at Penn Station yesterday, I had time to engage in people watching and contemplation. It was a rainy, humid July day and the air hung heavy in the building. I was positioned for easy egress near the stairs leading to Seventh Avenue. I arrived at what might have been the height of rush hour, around 5:30, and the commuters came in daunting droves. They came unabated for the entirety of my time there, which was over an hour.
I am always interested in the demeanor of the people hurrying along to make a train. Some people were actually hurrying – running – and others were part of the meandering crowd, just making their way. I wondered how long it would take them to get where they were going. I wondered how they lived this life, day after day, seemingly like cattle being herded along. There were young men in what I have determined to be the new “uniform” of the young professional: a fitted medium blue suit with a brown belt and brown shoes. There was a bevy of young men in variations of this attire. Some others wore more traditional business attire and I wondered about the men in The Great Gatsby who wore seersucker suits and rode the trains without air conditioning. It was surely hot and humid enough to warrant summer weight fabrics. Despite air conditioned offices, the “to and fro” entailed being out in the heat and humidity and some of the clothing looked stifling to me.
From Gatsby:
“The next day was broiling, almost the last, certainly the warmest, of the summer. As my train emerged from the tunnel into the sunlight, only the hot whistles of the National Biscuit Company broke the simmering hush at noon. The straw seats of the car hovered on the edge of combustion; the woman next to me perspired delicately for a while into her white shirtwaist, and then, as her newspaper dampened under her fingers, lapsed despairingly into deep heat with a desolate cry….’Hot!’ said the conductor to familiar faces. ‘Some weather!…Hot!…Hot!…Hot!…Is it hot enough for you? Is it hot? Is it…?’”
Unlike the woman in Gatsby who was wearing a shirtwaist dress, women today did not seem to have any set type of office attire. There were a couple of women wearing dresses with a flared skirt which blew in the breeze generated by the massive fans and which were dangerously close to mimicking the skirt on the white dress worn by Marilyn Monroe in The Seven Year Itch. You know that iconic photo where she walks over a grate and her skirt blows up? These skirts were threatening to do the same, but the women kept on hurrying toward the trains without noticing.
How do they keep up with this life? Did an enjoyable job make the commute worthwhile? Did the job pay so well that the commute was just part of the price to pay for the rewards? People walked with wireless headphones, connected to others by their cell phones. Some walked with serious expressions on their faces, some with fatigue. There were pregnant women in the crowd and I wondered how the combined toll of pregnancy, the commute, and the oppressive heat were at all manageable. Did they just survive and not thrive?
This day was a normal day of commuting, the rain being the only impediment. How do these commuters carry on knowing that, at any random time, it could all break down and they could be at the mercy of delays or no service. How does a person deal with that knowledge? If I had to rely upon a whimsical universe to ensure that I would be able to get to my daily destination, it would probably take all my compartmentalizing skills to deal with it. I understand the random nature of our universe, but there are all kinds of commuter issues we hear about where weather or rail difficulties cause commuters to be stranded. What do you do if you cannot get home and you have children waiting? Maybe you have a spouse who works the night shift or you are a single parent with a babysitter who leaves at a certain time. Commuting may be the thing to do when you are young and relatively unattached but the allure of the city may wane when there are things at home which are more enthralling than the excitement of living the dream of working in a city which has it all. If you are more focused on enjoying the riches of the city and it is not merely a means to an end, perhaps you are better able to roll with things that keep you in the city past the time you usually depart.
I guess I am ill equipped to understand the mindset of the commuter. I love my job but it allows me to live other facets of my life. I enjoy coming home and being able to do other things. In fact, I have a mental need to be able to go home or, at least, to go to a more restful place in my mind. I was lucky enough to be able to see my children each night and to attend their school events and sporting events. To be unable to do so would have taken away a valuable part of my life. I realize not everyone has the ability to tuck their kids into bed every night and it saddens me for both the kids and the parents. I am not oblivious to the fact that sometimes sacrifices are made to support the family. I get all that. What struck me that day is that I would never want to do this on a daily basis. I never held that dream. I do like coming into New York City, but I also like coming home from there. For me, it is a place of sporadic visits, not the place of my dreams. That day, it was again brought home to me how different our hopes and dreams are.
Of course, not everyone I saw was a daily commuter or someone following a dream. Some were there for plays, concerts, and other events just as I was. They were headed through the station and out to the streets of Manhattan. I was struck that day, I think, by the sheer volume of people streaming into Penn Station, many of them coming from jobs. Throngs of them just continually moving along toward their destination, wherever that might be. It was a relentless human stream just rushing along.
When Kaitlin arrived and we went out onto Seventh Avenue, I did feel the excitement of the city. It is nearly impossible not to. It was rainy and humid, as I mentioned, yet the city was alive with the bustling of the crowds moving every which way. It was, after all, July in New York City and, as Billy Joel later sang,
“And babe, don’t you know it’s a pity
That the days can’t be like the nights
In the summer, in the city
In the summer, in the city…”
He can always put me in a “New York State of Mind” for a time, but I will always return to New Jersey where I can, at my leisure, contemplate life.