Maybe the recent addition of Little Miss C to the TJ clan has made me mushy, but I quite liked NY Times reporter Anthony DePalma’s essay in the Westchester/Jersey/Long Island/Nutmeg State’s Sunday Times about commuting with his sons.
“Some Commutes Are Just Too Short” explains how Anthony’s sons Aahren (not wild about the spelling, between you and me) and Andres both ended up commuting from Montclair.
That meant there suddenly were enough DePalmas on the train to fill one of New Jersey Transit’s dreaded three-across seats by ourselves.
The author ends up relishing his time on the train with the boys, however short-lived it proved to be.
Time became a commodity on the 6:40, and the train offered me the rare opportunity to recapture some of the lost moments I thought were gone forever. There had been so many days that I missed being with them because of my work, but now, briefly, it was my work, and theirs, that held out a reprieve.
They became boys again, joking, mocking each other the way brothers do to get a laugh out of each other, and me too. Yet we sometimes talked about their work, and I was amazed at the mounting responsibilities they were taking on and the skills they had acquired when it seemed like such a short time ago I was tying towels around their shoulders because they wanted to fly like Superman.