Slow train to New York

It was the day before my birthday and I was on a slow train to New York – travelling through the folds of the Appalachian Mountains and for a while, following the course of the Juniata River.

I was nearing the end of my trip. Five weeks in Canada, the land of bears and maple syrup and gentle, kind people. Then a week in Pennsylvania in a college town that lived and breathed football. A progressive place, yet 20 minutes out of town there are Trump for America signs and Amish farmers travelling the back roads on horse and carts. In both countries, we reminisced about our collective pasts, where we’ve travelled, and our work, and yet the conversation drifted always towards politics. Three countries all facing similar issues.

Our train flitted by small towns. Ramshackle boarded-up buildings leant up against grand civic buildings built in the day when there was a hint of optimism, glory and good work to be done. Now the buildings look incongruous signifying the gulf between the people. Rich v poor, black v white, Republican v Democrat.  Could the rifts be fixed? That was been the subject of many a conversation over the past few weeks. None of us had the answers.  We have hope, and that’s all we can have.

 As I sat on the train and watched America roll by, I pondered on the long road leading me to this point. Every significant birthday, I have spent “somewhere else.” Maybe this was a hangover from childhood where my birthday parties were stressful, embarrassing and almost always, a let-down. In my twenties, birthdays were one shambolic pub night after another from year to year. So, I decided at some point, that the significant birthdays if nothing else, would be special. My 24^th and 30^th birthdays were in London. My 24^th I spent with strangers at a pub in Earls Court. For the big 30, I was in London, drinking way too much at a Covent Garden Pub which had been preceded by tea at The Ritz. I have a photo of me that night, dishevelled but oh so happy. My 40th was in Noosa. A lunch at a fancy restaurant had been planned but my oldest friend was ill, so we spent the day in her holiday flat in Coolum, eating sandwiches and watching television.

The date was 12 Sept 2001. I dragged myself away from the screen and went out on the balcony and far out at sea, I saw a whale breech. I thought that this was a good sign amidst all the misery of the day.

A decade later, my 50th birthday was beside Lake Achensee in Austria. The breakfast waiter offered me wine for breakfast (I declined). Later I sank deep in a shale oil bath as I gazed at the mountains outside. My skin and air never felt so soft, though the aftersmell of the oil was harder to take.

I began planning for my 60th, years out.  I’d be with friends and family from around the world who would fly in to join me. I’d be in New York the perfect place to spend a birthday. A place where you can do anything, eat anything, and never be bored. Then came pesky Covid and instead of being on the Upper West Side I settled for a park in Richmond sipping champagne with my oldest friend. There was no in-house dining at restaurants due to lockdowns so I ordered takeaway American BBQ and pretended we were somewhere in deepest America, and having a rooting tooting good time.

But the urge was still there – to go to New York but also Canada. I’ve wanted to visit from the age of 10 after reading Anne of Green Gables Visiting there had been five weeks of cookies, mountains and a random bear sighting. I’d driven the Icefields Parkway in the Rocky Mountains. I’d conquered (sort of) my fear of driving on the wrong side of the road. I’d made my pilgrimage to PEI , land of Anne of Green Gables and eaten very expensive lobster rolls.

As my train drew closer to the city, there was a change of crew and I could hear the New York accent. We roared into Philadelphia and part of me wanted to get off. This was the city where the Declaration of Independence was signed. A couple of hours later, my first glimpse of the Manhattan skyline was over an empty allotment of an industrial estate somewhere in New Jersey. I stumbled out of Penn Station in the middle of a thunderstorm and remembered I didn’t have an umbrella. But I didn’t care. I was going to be alone for my birthday in the greatest city in the world. Heaven on a stick.