changing trains on a Tuesday morning

Jimmy Carter, eye contact and a chance encounter on the D.C. Metro

Lately: Not a lot to report. It snowed, and I baked. Sourdough brioche was the highlight, and now I’m living off chicken salad sandwiches made with the dense, buttery bread. … This week, I’m sending a somewhat spontaneous essay, which has nothing at all to do with food. Read on!

changing trains on a Tuesday morning

Smile quickly and look away. That’s my inclination, almost always, when I meet eyes with a stranger in public, whether I’m crossing the street or boarding the bus, loitering on the subway platform or tapping at my keyboard in a coffee shop. I use public transit to commute and run errands, and I walk almost everywhere else, moving with people rather than past them, without the buffer of a windshield and 3,000 pounds of metal armor on wheels.

And so: Smile. Glance down. Repeat. It’s enough, right? Polite enough in some cases, avoidant enough in others.

On Tuesday morning, after trudging over packed, day-old snow and into the bowels of Union Station, I waited on an emptier-than-usual red line platform and did it again. A short man in a neon-orange hat approached, and those were the only details that registered at first, because in smiling and looking away, you catch only a smear of features and colors, not a whole person.

But then the man said something, and inwardly I groaned. He stopped next to my husband, and as he asked about the direction of the incoming train, I got a closer look. The orange hat was lined with faux fur, and its ear flaps were pulled down, and pinned to the front was a 1976 Jimmy Carter campaign button. The president’s younger face beamed in black and white. John F. Kennedy’s image was affixed to the man’s leather jacket, and a sheaf of papers was stuffed into the pocket of his pants. He held a cane with a four-pronged base, barely leaning on it, and over his shoulder he carried a small insulated cooler. His lips sucked tight around his teeth, and he smiled.

The man, it turned out, had traveled to D.C. from Florida to “say goodbye” — his words, not mine — to Carter, the beloved president he’d campaigned for all those decades ago. He was a disabled veteran, and he’d loved JFK, and he remembered the long-ago horses from his long-ago funeral. He wondered if the horses — newer ones, younger ones, of course — would be out in the D.C. chill on Tuesday as Carter’s body processed to the Capitol. He’d mapped out his path to the spot near the Mall where he hoped to spot the motorcade, and he knew where he needed to change trains, but he wasn’t sure which line to get on, or which direction to go.

And that, of course, is what led him to us, the first faces he saw on the Metro platform, or maybe just the first to smile. When the doors opened, we slowed our pace and walked with him aboard. We gestured to an accessible seat, then perched on the one behind him. He told us his story as the train rumbled downtown. He was excited, proud. I strained to hear his soft drawl over the whoosh of the train, and I nudged Jesse; he was getting off at the same stop where the man needed to switch to a different line. So when the doors dinged, Jesse walked with the man, pointing him to the right, walking him down the stairs, settling him on the proper platform. He wished him luck and left him. The whole day, I wished one of us could’ve found the time to go along and make sure he made it where he needed to be.

But then I realized: He didn’t need us. If he needed help, he would find someone else, some other unsuspecting commuter with a half-second of eye contact to spare. And I hope he told them his story, too.

The thing about living in D.C. is there’s always another history-making event to catch if you missed the last one. The amount of times I’ve said I wanted to go watch a peaceful protest or a speech or a festival on the Mall and then found myself on the couch thinking “next time” — well, I’d be embarrassed to tally them up. When Barack Obama was elected president in 2008, I stayed home while two of my roommates joined the crowd that rushed toward the White House. I had a test the next day, and there would always be something else to celebrate.

In the 16 years since, I’ve learned enough to know better. Last week, I slept two blocks from the spot where a terrorist killed 14 people on Bourbon Street. Today, Jesse and I tracked my sisters-in-law and my nephew as they evacuated L.A. I could go on. The history we’re making is a series of punches to the gut.

And so on Wednesday, I thought of my friend from the train — and about how Carter’s 100 years of life and innumerable good deeds were something worth celebrating. I went to an appointment, and I bent my walk home toward the Capitol. The black wire fences were up — because of Carter, because of Jan. 6, because of the looming inauguration, I don’t know — and I walked along the perimeter until I found the opening, where police waved people through. “Here for the viewing?” they asked, over and over, and over and over we all nodded, smiled, murmured yes. I hadn’t even planned to go in, but there I was in the sparse crowd. On a frigid, snowy day at lunchtime, the line was a half-empty maze, and so I kept walking toward the ramp to the visitor’s center entrance. I kept my eye out for an orange hat, but I saw none. I wound my way through security, through another line and another, up stairs and escalators and finally into the rotunda, through the constant stream of mourners, past the flag-draped casket of a man who was almost certainly too good to be president. History worth remembering. No excuse not to show up, when it’s right down the street.

All because of a fleeting glance of eye contact and an old man from Florida who held it. On the ice-packed sidewalks as I made my way home, I hoped he’d found an elbow to steady him.