What do we see?

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The seats were empty, but someone clearly inhabited them.  I grudgingly sat in an open seat behind them, their double berth mocking me as I longingly ogled the unused plugs on the window wall in my seats.  I did not want to disturb my new seatmate to ask if I could plug in.  My phone battery dropped steadily as I attended to email, texts, and various other distractions.

At the next stop, my seatmate left me, only to be quickly replaced by another, who proceeded to answer her phone and talk nonstop about her upcoming wedding plans.  Across the aisle from me, two women also talked about a wedding – what should they wear?  Was it strange that there seemed to be two invites – one to the ceremony/reception and a second to a party after the reception?  Who else was invited?

A few minutes later, a grandmother and her grands came back to the empty seats I had been admiring.  “The line was so long,” she said. 

Grandpa replied, “I figured something had kept you all that time!” 

“Plus, he was soooooo slow,” she complained.

“He wasn’t slow,” her grandson interjected.  “He was just busy with that long line.”  I appreciated his perspective.

A short time later, I realized I had left my lunch/dinner in the fridge, and, tired of the wedding talk around me, I decided to brave the long line at the snack bar.

It was, in fact, long, stretching back the length of the café car.  It moved at a snail’s pace.  As I progressed past the tables, I observed a couple watching a Denzel movie, a family sharing a bag of pizza pretzels, and a 3-year-old sleeping, folded in half at his waist on the diner car bench, his blonde curls draping sweetly around him.  I wondered whether my own back would survive trying to sleep at such an angle.

As I approached the finish line, where I could actually see the menu board, the man behind me asked, “Is everyone ordering steak, or is this guy just slow?”

I had been watching the single server attend to patron after patron.  He was working hard.  He was slow.  But he was working hard, persistently, and without thanks.

The man in line behind me tried to engage me in complaint about the service.  I focused on how hard the server was working. 

The gentleman behind the counter struggled with some drinks in the fridge.  I wanted to help him.  He needed help.  And then the cans fell.  I moved quickly, the only person in line to do so, and I picked up the cans.  I should have moved sooner to help.  He needed help.

When I got to the counter, ready to place my order, I said, “Wow, you sure are working hard!”  I smiled.  He looked away, pausing for a minute, and then said, “You are the only person who has said that to me.”  Apparently, everyone else offered complaint.  I told him to “hang in there and have a nice evening.”  I gave him a nice tip.

My wait in line had taken the entire time between stops, and I rushed back to my seat as we waited in station, trying to beat the boarding crowd.  I followed two children, probably around ages 10 and 12, who were trying to get back to their family.

We came to a halt behind an elderly lady, who was struggling to get her bag on the train.  She had dropped her cup, and ice had spilled at the doorway.  I couldn’t see, my view cut off by the two children in front of me, but I could see she needed help the kids weren’t offering.  I pushed a bit in front of them.

“Do you need help, ma’am?”  She handed me her suitcase handle while she cleaned up the mess.  We all started moving forward in the cars.

At the head of the next car, she dropped her water bottle.  The children in front of me just stood there.  I couldn’t reach the bottle.  “Pick it up,” I said to the girl.  She did.  I reached between her and her brother, offering to take the woman’s oversized handbag.  I pushed my way in front of the children to better assist her.

We made it one more car, past my own seat, before I suggested that the woman put her suitcase in the compartment.  As I struggled to help her, the children asked, “Can we go through?”  

"Just give me a minute," I replied.  “Patience,” I thought.  “She needs help, can’t you see?”

“I’m with my granddaughter,” the woman said to me, her eyes darting the train to find her, and then she took off forward to the next car.  The girl was not quite 9.  I asked the women next to my seat who were getting off the train at the next stop to hold their seats while I went to find the pair. There were no other pairs of seats available.

“I have seats for you,” I said.  She smiled her appreciation.

The elderly woman and her 8-year-old granddaughter stood in the aisle for the next ten+ minutes.  I wanted the women next to me to gather their luggage as soon as the announcement of the next station came over the loudspeaker – to let this obviously tired woman sit.  Instead, they sat, stoically, in their seats until the train came to a stop.  They did not help.

I should have offered my seat.  She needed help – even more help than I had already given her.  The physical space made it awkward for me to offer, and I didn’t.

Twice on this trip, I wanted to offer help, and I didn’t when I should have.

Twice on this trip, others were downright rude and/or oblivious.

I ponder what happened, wondering why I (and perhaps that grandson from the beginning of this story) was the only one who seemed to see.  Why did no one in line see the server who was working hard? Why did those children not offer to help, not even move in that direction?  Why did those women (and my seatmate) ignore this grandmother and her granddaughter?

I wonder if it’s because of race.  Everyone who did not see (and the majority of the train) was white.  The server, grandmother, and her granddaughter were black.  Did you guess that?  Did you picture that? 

I wonder… and then I wonder if this is because of our “me” culture. 

And then I wonder whether my children would have helped.  

And I wonder why I succumbed to propriety rather than empathy, which I absolutely felt. 

But here’s what I don’t wonder.  We have to see people.  We have to see others.  We have to act to help them when they need help. 

And I need to do better.