Coming home from work

It’s raining tonight.

It’s usually raining here.  Especially at night.

I like the rain.

On the train everyone has their own something to read.  We sit looking down at our laps.  We don’t look at each other.  Someone left their broken umbrella, open, in the exit doors.  Every other disembarker nearly trips over it.  None of us pick it up.  I want music as I bicycle home.  Metallica is not right.  The Supremes are not right.  Shuffle guesses “Andare” by somebody whose name is probably Ludovico Einaudi.  It was a free download.  It’s piano and pretty.

It’s still raining.

The girl in front of me rides her bike with her red umbrella open.  She disappears when I’m not looking.  I pass the school where I took my first Dutch class.  That was fun.  Nice people.  I can’t continue with them because of my new job.  I’ll miss them.  Someone in the line of cars honks, and I consider the idea that someone knew me.  It’s unlikely.

I listen to the same song a second time, not wanting to risk a wrong next one.

I feel like I am riding fast, and wonder if I have the wind with me.

Today was the second day of my new call center job.  Still training, normalcy starts Monday at 14:00.  It is totally different from and resembles my last job.  I made my first call today.  To Saint Anthony’s Hospital in Denver, Colorado where Kathy was very friendly and gave me a different number to call.  My brain produced endorphins.  I hypothesize that it was like the first time I jumped off the high dive at Eagle Pool, 10 years old I think.  I’m not sure yet how I feel about it…but I want to do it again.  I think I could get good at it.  Swan dive?  I think I am the only one of the new people who tried it.

I listen to Ludovico’s song a third time.

I pass the house on the corner that just had a new baby.  They hang baby clothes and a banner outside, which says the name is Nieke.  I am guessing that’s a girl.  I wonder if she’ll go any of the places I’ve been.  And how they’ll be different.  I wonder if I will ever do any of the things she will.  I wonder where we’ll be on each other’s 40^th birthday.  I’ll be 70 at hers.  Will I be 70 at hers?

The third time through the song ends as I pull up to the garage we share with the other tenants, who fill it with bags of recycling and a baby carriage, and which smells like my rusty first car when it’s damp.

I turn the music off.