The God Eye Connection

We made eye contact on the line at Moynihan Train Hall, just before you get on the escalator going down to the trains. The first time I noticed this kind of exchange - a quick locking of eyes that feels as though the person’s pupils have squirted directly into yours - it was with a little dark-haired girl. This was maybe twenty years ago and as she walked past, holding her mother’s hand, our eyes met and, squirt squirt. The moment was as fleeting as it was arresting, and I thought, this is the best evidence of God I’ve encountered.

I did not give one more thought to the man on the train line until he asked if he could sit across from me; I was at the front of the car, the double-seats that face each other. I had noticed on the line that he used a cane, but I was getting my laptop out - I’d planned to work on the two-hour ride up to Rhinecliff - and did not until later notice how cool it was, titanium blue and foldable, though I didn’t see him fold it, I’d been paying attention to the two men across from us, strangers until then, discussing their new headphones. We all talked for a few minutes until the man across from me said, “I’m coming back from burying my mother. She was 99.”

The men across from us settled into their respective playlists as I told the man across from me, whose name was Ed, that I was going to see my mother, who was close to death. Reports the week before had been rather dire; that I thought it might be the last time I’d see her, though I’d thought that before.

Ed looked at me for a long moment. That fleeting look on line - designed, given, who knows - had put us here, and there would be no laptop working. There would be telling each other our mother’s names. There would be a light toasting to Virginia and Katherine with the coffees I bought for us in the cafe car. There would be Ed - who I would have put at maybe 70 but who turned out to be have been born somewhere around 1971 - telling me he was one of eight children; his parents had six and then adopted Ed and his younger sister; they’d been in “a foundling home” and, later, when Ed asked his father why they’d adopted two more when they already had six, his father had shrugged and said, “It’s what your mother wanted.”

His dad had been that way, Ed said. I did not ask him how he hurt his leg. I did ask what job he’d retired from. He said the last time he worked was 2009; that he made baby cereal in a Beech-Nut factory where he lived upstate. This really brightened me, which he could see, and that brightened him, brought him a little closer to being less unseated by his mother death. He told me he thought he’d been prepared, but it had rocked him. I told him I thought I was prepared too.

If there was one good thing, he said, about not having to go back and forth to Atlanta - his mother had broken her hip the year before, had entered rehab, had gone downhill, the exact trajectory of my mother - it was that he could resume his classes with regularity; he was studying to be a substance abuse counselor. I offered how much that was needed; that I’d known a lot of people who’d had substance abuse issues.

“I’ve had them too,” he said, looking at me very squarely, a relative of the squirt-squirt, there was a lot under there - maybe the leg, maybe some worse stuff, probably some worse stuff. I told him it was great that he’d stopped using.

“I’m much better not doing them,” he said.

“Well yeah!” I said, and laughed, a reaction he seemed so surprised by he laughed too.

We talked more, about how he'd miss his mother’s cooking; about siblings who picked up their end and ones who did not. I don’t remember if I told him what I did for work. I did tell him I, too, loved to cook.

And then it was my stop; he still had six hours to go. Ed and I shook hands, warmly, and I cannot tell you why I am getting emotional right now recalling this, and about meeting this person there was no reason to meet except I guess there was.