August 15, 2013

Getting on the 5 at Fulton Street to go to an audition, I sit down next to an older Middle Eastern woman.  I can see out of my peripheral that she's looking at me in that way that people - especially older women - often do these days when they want to strike up a conversation about my pregnancy.  I'm trying not to notice, not to be rude, but because I'm enjoying my solitude.  I'm blasting The Protomen on my iPod and I'm enjoying a sense of phony solitude within the music.

But now she's saying something.  Fuck.  I yank out one earbud.  "Sorry?"

She repeats, smiling in a sweet grandmotherly way, "How much longer?"

"A month," I tell her.

"Ah, so not much longer?"

"Nope.  Not much longer."  I agree, and I realize that this is probably the first time I've agreed with a stranger about how much time I've got left.  And I did it because she asked me, she didn't tell me.  She asked me how long, and I told her, and then I chose to agree that in fact a month is not that long.  It feels nice.  To be talked to like a person about a special thing, and not to be told what I look like or how they can predict how much time I've got left.

"First baby?"

"Yes."

"Oh, that's nice," she says, and she rests her head on her hands which are folded over her purse, which sits in her lap.

And that's all.  No follow up questions.

I get up at the next stop, and I say to her, "Have a nice day," and she looks up, maybe surprised, and smiles, "You too.  Have a really nice day."